Compulsory Schooling and the Returns to Education: A Re-examination

Sophie van Huellen and Duo Qin

No 199, Working Papers from Department of Economics, SOAS University of London, UK

Abstract: We re-examine the effect of compulsory school law on education in the US pioneered by Angrist and Krueger (1991). We show that the standard instrumental variable approach of the education variable not only yields empirically inconsistent estimates, but is conceptually confused. The confusion arises from the rejection of the key causal variable as a valid conditional variable. By route of a causally explicit model design we are able to identify the circumstances under which the formerly rejected variable can yield valid inference values. Our investigation demonstrates the importance of building data-consistent models over estimator choice in successful research designs.

Keywords: instrumental variables; randomisation; research design; returns to education; treatment effect (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C26 C52 H75 I21 I26 J24 N32 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 35
Date: 2016-10
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-edu and nep-lma
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

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Related works:
Journal Article: Compulsory Schooling and Returns to Education: A Re-Examination (2019)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:soa:wpaper:199

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