Educational Returns, ability composition and cohort effects: theory and evidence for cohorts of early-career UK graduates

Norman Ireland, Robin A. Naylor, Jeremy Smith and Shqiponja Telhaj

No 271294, Economic Research Papers from University of Warwick - Department of Economics

Abstract: An increase over time in the proportion of young people obtaining a degree is likely to impact on the relative ability compositions (i) of graduates and non-graduates and (ii) across graduates with different classes of degree award. In a signalling framework, we examine the implications of this on biases across cohorts in estimates of educational returns. In an empirical analysis, we exploit administrative data on whole populations of UK university students for ten graduate cohorts to investigate the extent to which early labour market outcomes vary with class of degree awarded. Consistent with our theoretical model, we find that returns by degree class increased across cohorts during a period of substantial graduate expansion. We also corroborate the empirical findings with evidence from complementary data on graduate sample surveys.

Keywords: Financial; Economics (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 41
Date: 2009-06-05
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (5)

Downloads: (external link)
https://ageconsearch.umn.edu/record/271294/files/twerp_906.pdf (application/pdf)
https://ageconsearch.umn.edu/record/271294/files/twerp_906.pdf?subformat=pdfa (application/pdf)

Related works:
Working Paper: Educational Returns, Ability Composition and Cohort Effects: Theory and Evidence for Cohorts of Early-Career UK Graduates (2009)
Working Paper: Educational returns, ability composition and cohort effects: theory and evidence for cohorts of early-career UK graduates (2009)
Working Paper: Educational Returns, ability composition and cohort effects: theory and evidence for cohorts of early-career UK graduates (2009)
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: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ags:uwarer:271294

DOI: 10.22004/ag.econ.271294

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Economic Research Papers from University of Warwick - Department of Economics
Bibliographic data for series maintained by AgEcon Search ().