Do Guns Displace Books ? The Impact of Compulsory Military Service on Educational Attainment # 260
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چکیده
Compulsory military service typically drafts young men when they are at the height of their learning ability. Thus, it can be expected to depress the demand for higher education since skill atrophy and the delayed entry into the civilian labor market reduce the returns to human-capital investments. Attending university, however, might open the possibility to avoid the draft, leading to an increase in the demand for tertiary education. To estimate the causal eff ect of conscription on the probability to obtain a university degree, we use a regression-discontinuity design that employs special regulations associated with the introduction of conscription in Germany in 1956. We estimate conscription to increase the probability of having a university degree. JEL Classifi cation: I28, J24
منابع مشابه
The Impact of Compulsory Military Service on Educational Attainment
Do Guns Displace Books? The Impact of Compulsory Military Service on Educational Attainment Compulsory military service typically drafts young men when they are at the height of their learning ability. Thus, it can be expected to depress the demand for higher education since skill atrophy and the delayed entry into the civilian labor market reduce the returns to humancapital investments. Attend...
متن کاملDo Guns Displace Books? The Impact of Compulsory Military Service on Educational Attainment
Compulsory military service typically drafts young men when they are at the height of their learning ability. Thus, it can be expected to depress the demand for higher education since skill atrophy and the delayed entry into the civilian labor market reduce the returns to human-capital investments. Attending university, however, might open the possibility to avoid the draft, leading to an incre...
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Compulsory military service is expected to have a negative impact on the demand for higher education through its effect on the returns to human capital investments. This latter impact is due to, among others, skill atrophy (i.e., the depreciation of human capital learned before military service), the acquisition of skills not relevant for the civilian labor market and the associated time lost d...
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