Publication: Spending on Research and the Returns to Education in Italy
Abstract
The essay reviews the different notions of returns to education ordinarily used in the economic policy debate and provides estimates of the quantitative importance of each. Investment in education is profitable both for individuals and for society even from the strictly economic standpoint; and including the effects of education on other dimensions of individual and collective welfare only strengthens this conclusion. The various indicators also show that the returns to investment in education, especially for younger people, are lower in Italy, despite the country's severe shortage of human capital. This paradoxical situation raises serious problems for economic policy in Italy, because the price signals that the market is transmitting to agents do not favour the rapid accumulation of knowledge that is needed in order to escape from the slow-growth trap.
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Publication Changes in Returns to Education in Latin America : The Role of Demand and Supply of Skills(2010)Using micro data for the urban areas of Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, and Mexico, the authors document trends in men's returns to education during the 1980s and the 1990s and estimate the role of supply and demand factors in explaining the changes in skill premia. They propose a model of demand for skills with three production inputs, corresponding to workers with primary-, secondary-, and university-level education. Further, the authors demonstrate that an unprecedented rise in the supply of workers having completed secondary-level education depressed their wages relative to workers with primary-level education throughout Latin America. 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