Separating Uncertainty from Heterogeneity in Life Cycle Earnings

Flavio Cunha, James J. Heckman and Salvador Navarro

No 11024, NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc

Abstract: This paper develops and applies a method for decomposing cross section variability of earnings into components that are forecastable at the time students decide to go to college (heterogeneity) and components that are unforecastable. About 60% of variability in returns to schooling is forecastable. This has important implications for using measured variability to price risk and predict college attendance.

JEL-codes: C33 D84 I21 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-ecm
Date: 2005-01
Note: EFG ED LS CH
View list of references View citations in EconPapers

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.nber.org/papers/w11024.pdf (application/pdf)
Access to the full text is generally limited to series subscribers, however if the top level domain of the client browser is in a developing country or transition economy free access is provided. More information about subscriptions and free access is available at http://www.nber.org/wwphelp.html.

Related works:
Working Paper: Separating uncertainty from heterogeneity in life cycle earnings (2004)
Working Paper: Separating Uncertainty from Heterogeneity in Life Cycle Earnings (2004)
Journal Article: Separating uncertainty from heterogeneity in life cycle earnings (2005)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: http://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nbr:nberwo:11024

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
http://www.nber.org/papers/w11024
The price is Paper copy available by mail.

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc
Address: National Bureau of Economic Research, 1050 Massachusetts Avenue Cambridge, MA 02138, U.S.A.
Contact information at EDIRC.
Series data maintained by ().