This study seeks to reveal the heterogeneity in occupation-specific wage returns among graduates of the German vocational education and training (VET) system. We distinguish between VET graduates with and without a higher education entrance certificate (i.e. an Abitur). To implement our hierarchical multi-level analyses, we exploit the latest wave…

Context: Existing studies have explored the association between workplace training and wages suggesting that training participation may have a positive association with wages. However, we still know very little about whether this association varies between men and women. Through its potential positive association with wages, training may balance…

This study analyses the effects of institutional stratification in higher education systems on graduates' wages in engineering fields in Germany and Korea. We use survey data from the Korean 2013 Graduates Occupational Mobility Survey (GOMS) and the German 2013 Graduate Survey Cooperation Project (KOAB). For Korea, where the higher education…

Ample evidence indicates that a person's human capital is important for success on the labor market in terms of both wages and employment prospects. However, unlike the efforts to identify the impact of school attainment on labor-market outcomes, the literature on returns to cognitive skills has not yet provided convincing evidence that the…

The empirical analysis examines differences in salaries and working time of doctorate holders in comparison to graduates with a master or equivalent degree (in Germany, the first university degree is called a "diploma" or "state examination" depending on the field of study. The diploma degree and the state examination are…

This article provides evidence about differences in the recent tertiary education expansion in Austria, Germany, the Czech Republic, Poland and Slovakia. Focusing on these differences, we have examined private returns to tertiary education acquired before and after the tertiary education expansion. We compare these returns as follows: Austria with…

Using German linked employer-employee data, this paper investigates the short-term impact of on-the-job training on wages. The applied estimation approach was first introduced by Leuven and Oosterbeek (2008). Wages of employees who intended to participate in training but did not do so because of a random event are compared to wages of training…

Aggregate unemployment may affect individual returns to education through qualification-specific responses in participation and wage bargaining. This paper shows that an increase in regional unemployment by 1% decreases returns to education by 0.005 percentage points. This implies that higher skilled employees are better sheltered from labour…

This paper seeks to analyse the relationship between wages and education at a European level, using a quantile regression in order to be able to extend the study along the whole wage distribution. This analysis is carried out for a sample of 14 European countries (Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Ireland, Italy,…

Central examinations--that is, centrally set and marked exams--have often been discussed as an instrument for improving educational outcomes. The aim of our study was to determine whether central exams have an impact not only on educational but also on labour market outcomes. We explain school quality choice through the incentives created by…

Comparison of continuing training in France and Germany finds that, in France, more talented workers are selected for training but training does not produce significant wage effects. In Germany, selection operates differently: continuing training is given to a greater number of employees and has an effect on career advancement. (SK)

The conclusion of a 1999 Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) report that wage gains for training are higher for workers with lower levels of education was revisited using data for males from the 1997 Australian Survey of Education and Training (SET). The study used methods similar to the OECD report (ordinary least squares…

This book presents empirical evaluations of the effects of different types of training programs in East Germany. Chapter 1 presents an overview of labor, the study objectives and results, and discussion of causality and the identification problem in evaluation studies. Chapter 2 examines point estimates of the effects of two types of continuous…