Human Capital and Skill Specificity

Maxim Poletaev and Chris Robinson
Additional contact information
Maxim Poletaev: University of Western Ontario, https://economics.uwo.ca/

No 20036, University of Western Ontario, Centre for Human Capital and Productivity (CHCP) Working Papers from University of Western Ontario, Centre for Human Capital and Productivity (CHCP)

Abstract: This paper examines whether local labor market conditions at the time of high school graduation have long-term effects on wages. We find that a higher unemployment rate raises the probability of staying in school after finishing high school of white males, but reduces that of black males. A higher unemployment rate is also found to have a negative and lasting impact on the wages of white males who directly enter the workforce after graduating from high school. The main impetus of these lower wages is a tendency to accumulate less experience over the same time horizon. Thus, for most individuals graduating during a recession represents bad luck. However, for some the forced opportunity of additional years of education results in higher earnings levels.

Keywords: earnings; education; business cycle (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: E3 J3 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2003
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (5)

Downloads: (external link)
https://ir.lib.uwo.ca/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1038&context=economicscibc (application/pdf)
Our link check indicates that this URL is bad, the error code is: 403 Forbidden

Related works:
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:uwo:hcuwoc:20036

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
https://economics.uw ... itting_ordering.html
The price is Paper copy available by mail at a cost of $10.00 Canadian each.

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in University of Western Ontario, Centre for Human Capital and Productivity (CHCP) Working Papers from University of Western Ontario, Centre for Human Capital and Productivity (CHCP) Centre for Human Capital and Productivity (CHCP), Social Science Centre, University of Western Ontario, London, Ontario, Canada N6A 5C2.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ().