IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/hhs/iuiwop/0495.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Corporate Job Ladders in Europe: Wage Premia for University vs. High School Level Positions

Author

Listed:
  • Mellander, Erik

    (The Research Institute of Industrial Economics)

  • Skedinger, Per

    (The Research Institute of Industrial Economics)

Abstract

Investment in human capital is a central issue in the literature on economic growth. The purpose of this study is to shed light on the economic incentives for investment in university education across countries. An empirical investigation of earnings for private-sector engineers and business administrators in seven European countries - Belgium, Denmark, France, Germany, Italy, Sweden and the United Kingdom - is presented. The analysis is based on a large micro-data set that is ideally suited for international comparisons. It contains information on earnings, age, occupation, responsibility level, industry and firm size. Standardized wage premia for university vs. high school level positions are computed for each country and field of work. The results indicate that the wage premia are higher for business administrators than for engineers in all the countries considered and that the premia for engineers are remarkably similar across countries. Aggregation over fields of work, which is not uncommon in studies on the returns to education, therefore seems to be questionable practice when comparing the returns in different countries.

Suggested Citation

  • Mellander, Erik & Skedinger, Per, 1998. "Corporate Job Ladders in Europe: Wage Premia for University vs. High School Level Positions," Working Paper Series 495, Research Institute of Industrial Economics, revised 25 Aug 1999.
    • Handle: RePEc:hhs:iuiwop:0495
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://swopec.hhs.se/iuiwop/papers/iuiwop0495.pdf.zip
    File Function: Complete Rendering
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://swopec.hhs.se/iuiwop/papers/iuiwop0495.pdf
    File Function: Complete Rendering
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://swopec.hhs.se/iuiwop/papers/iuiwop0495.ps.zip
    File Function: Complete Rendering
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://swopec.hhs.se/iuiwop/papers/iuiwop0495.ps
    File Function: Complete Rendering
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Brown, Charles & Medoff, James, 1989. "The Employer Size-Wage Effect," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 97(5), pages 1027-1059, October.
    2. W. Lee Hansen, 1970. "Education, Income, and Human Capital," NBER Books, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc, number hans70-1.
    3. Zvi Griliches, 1970. "Notes on the Role of Education in Production Functions and Growth Accounting," NBER Chapters, in: Education, Income, and Human Capital, pages 71-127, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Mellander, Erik, 2014. "Transparency of human resource policy," Working Paper Series 2014:24, IFAU - Institute for Evaluation of Labour Market and Education Policy.
    2. Gunnarsson, Gudmundur & Mellander, Erik & Savvidou, Eleni, 2004. "Human capital is the key to the IT productivity paradox," Working Paper Series 2004:13, IFAU - Institute for Evaluation of Labour Market and Education Policy.
    3. Mellander, Erik & Savvidiou, Eleni & Gunnarsson, Gudmundur, 2001. "Is Human Capital the Key to the IT Productivity Paradox?," Working Paper Series 551, Research Institute of Industrial Economics.
    4. Braconier, Henrik & Norback, Pehr-Johan & Urban, Dieter, 2005. "Multinational enterprises and wage costs: vertical FDI revisited," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 67(2), pages 446-470, December.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Olimpia NEAGU, 2012. "Measuring the Effects of Human Capital on Growth in the Case of Romania," Economics and Applied Informatics, "Dunarea de Jos" University of Galati, Faculty of Economics and Business Administration, issue 1, pages 83-92.
    2. Purnamita Dasgupta, 2008. "Measuring Sustainability with Macroeconomic Data for India," Working Papers id:1574, eSocialSciences.
    3. Loeb, Susanna & Bound, John, 1996. "The Effect of Measured School Inputs on Academic Achievement: Evidence form the 1920s, 1930s and 1940s Birth Cohorts," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 78(4), pages 653-664, November.
    4. Cindy Zoghi, 2010. "Measuring Labor Composition: A Comparison of Alternate Methodologies," NBER Chapters, in: Labor in the New Economy, pages 457-485, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    5. Adaiah Lilenstein, 2020. "Better measures of progress: Developing reliable estimates of educational access and quality in Francophone sub-Saharan Africa," Working Papers 13/2020, Stellenbosch University, Department of Economics.
    6. Judith K. Hellerstein & David Neumark, 2007. "Production Function and Wage Equation Estimation with Heterogeneous Labor: Evidence from a New Matched Employer-Employee Data Set," NBER Chapters, in: Hard-to-Measure Goods and Services: Essays in Honor of Zvi Griliches, pages 31-71, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    7. repec:dau:papers:123456789/4306 is not listed on IDEAS
    8. Herbertsson, Tryggvi Thor, 2003. "Accounting for human capital externalities with an application to the Nordic countries," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 47(3), pages 553-567, June.
    9. John C. Hause, 1975. "Ability and Schooling as Determinants of Lifetime Earnings, or If You're So Smart, Why Aren't You Rich?," NBER Chapters, in: Education, Income, and Human Behavior, pages 123-150, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    10. repec:eee:labchp:v:1:y:1986:i:c:p:525-602 is not listed on IDEAS
    11. Edward N. Wolff, 2002. "Productivity, computerization, and skill change," Economic Review, Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta, vol. 87(Q3), pages 63-87.
    12. Cameron, Gavin & Proudman, James & Redding, Stephen, 2005. "Technological convergence, R&D, trade and productivity growth," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 49(3), pages 775-807, April.
    13. Reuben Gronau, 2010. "Zvi Griliches' Contribution to the Theory of Human Capital," NBER Chapters, in: Contributions in Memory of Zvi Griliches, pages 275-297, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    14. Eli Berman & John Bound & Zvi Griliches, 1993. "Changes in the Demand for Skilled Labor within U.S. Manufacturing Industries: Evidence from the Annual Survey of Manufacturing," NBER Working Papers 4255, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    15. Farok J. Contractor & Susan M. Mudambi, 2008. "The influence of human capital investment on the exports of services and goods: An analysis of the top 25 services outsourcing countries," Management International Review, Springer, vol. 48(4), pages 433-445, April.
    16. Purnamita Dasgupta & Shikha Gupta, 2008. "Measuring Sustainability with Macroeconomic Data for India," Macroeconomics Working Papers 22149, East Asian Bureau of Economic Research.
    17. Wolff, Edward N., 2000. "Human capital investment and economic growth: exploring the cross-country evidence," Structural Change and Economic Dynamics, Elsevier, vol. 11(4), pages 433-472, December.
    18. Philippe De Vreyer & Flore Gubert & Anne-Sophie Robilliard, 2010. "Are There Returns to Migration Experience? An Empirical Analysis using Data on Return Migrants and Non-Migrants in West Africa," Annals of Economics and Statistics, GENES, issue 97-98, pages 307-328.
    19. Berndt, Ernst R. & Morrison, Catherine J., 1995. "High-tech capital formation and economic performance in U.S. manufacturing industries An exploratory analysis," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 65(1), pages 9-43, January.
    20. Zupančič Magda, 2016. "Older Knowledge Workers as the Labour Market Potential (Slovenia versus Finland)," Naše gospodarstvo/Our economy, Sciendo, vol. 62(4), pages 33-41, December.
    21. repec:dau:papers:123456789/5128 is not listed on IDEAS
    22. Henrekson, Magnus & Johansson, Dan, 2010. "Firm Growth, Institutions and Structural Transformation," Ratio Working Papers 150, The Ratio Institute.
    23. Henrekson, Magnus & Johansson, Dan, 1999. "Institutional Effects on the Evolution of the Size Distribution of Firms," Small Business Economics, Springer, vol. 12(1), pages 11-23, February.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Returns to education; Company wage policies;

    JEL classification:

    • J31 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Wages, Compensation, and Labor Costs - - - Wage Level and Structure; Wage Differentials
    • J44 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Particular Labor Markets - - - Professional Labor Markets and Occupations

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:hhs:iuiwop:0495. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Elisabeth Gustafsson (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/iuiiise.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.