IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/h/nbr/nberch/12236.html

Zvi Griliches' Contribution to the Theory of Human Capital

In: Contributions in Memory of Zvi Griliches

Author

Listed:
  • Reuben Gronau

Abstract

The paper discusses Zvi Griliches' contribution to the estimation of the earning function. The topic was the central theme of Griliches' research agenda during the 70s. Griliches played a major role in the ability- schooling controversy of the time. He was instrumental in repelling the attack of the revisionists' on the Theory of Human Capital, and the claim that the schooling effect in the earning function is merely an artifact of the true ability' and family background' effects. Griliches lacked at the time the proper data to prove unequivocally that the ability bias plays only a minor role in the estimation of the rate of return to schooling. He was, however, able to show that the seemingly foolproof evidence of his opponents suffers from serious biases due to the endogeneity and the measurement errors in the schooling variable. His assertion that the standard OLS estimator is biased downward, rather than upward, has been shown true by future research.
(This abstract was borrowed from another version of this item.)

Suggested Citation

  • Reuben Gronau, 2010. "Zvi Griliches' Contribution to the Theory of Human Capital," NBER Chapters, in: Contributions in Memory of Zvi Griliches, pages 275-297, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    • Handle: RePEc:nbr:nberch:12236
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    To our knowledge, this item is not available for download. To find whether it is available, there are three options:
    1. Check below whether another version of this item is available online.
    2. Check on the provider's web page whether it is in fact available.
    3. Perform a
    for a similarly titled item that would be available.

    Other versions of this item:

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Sonja C. Kassenboehmer & Stefanie Schurer, 2018. "Survey item-response behavior as an imperfect proxy for unobserved ability: Theory and application," Working Papers 2018-035, Human Capital and Economic Opportunity Working Group.
    2. Gootzeit, Michael J. & Okunade, Albert A., 2004. "Zvi Griliches as a qualified humanitarian: his thoughts on quantifying technological change and productivity," The Quarterly Review of Economics and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 44(3), pages 464-473, July.
    3. Deng, Binbin, 2010. "Schooling and Wage Revisited: Does Higher IQ Really Give You Higher Income?," MPRA Paper 23206, University Library of Munich, Germany.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • B3 - Schools of Economic Thought and Methodology - - History of Economic Thought: Individuals
    • C4 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Econometric and Statistical Methods: Special Topics

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:nbr:nberch:12236. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: the person in charge (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/nberrus.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.