This paper examines whether conclusions about the relationship between education and labor market risk depend on the use of commonly applied procedures to clean data of extreme values. The analysis uses fifteen years of data from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics to demonstrate that conclusions about the relationship between education and labor market risk are sensitive to how extreme values o...

This paper examines the labor market value of the GED for females, questioning two implicit assumptions that have been employed in earlier studies. We show that providing access to work experience may be a critical mechanism through which education credentials impart labor market value and that the labor market value of the GED credential depends on the skills with which dropouts left school. O...

Title of Thesis: SCHOOL DROPOUT AND SUBSEQUENT OFFENDING: DISTINGUISHING SELECTION FROM CAUSATION Gary Allen Sweeten, Master of Arts, 2004 Thesis directed by: Professor Shawn D. Bushway Department of Criminology and Criminal Justice Past research on the relationship between school dropout and offending is inconclusive. In explaining their findings, researchers have focused on strain and control...

This article brings a new perspective to the analysis of the wage effects of the Mariel boatlift crisis, in which an estimated 125,000 Cuban refugees migrated to Florida between April and October, 1980. The author revisits the question of wage impacts from such a supply shock, drawing on the cumulative insights of research on the economic impact of immigration. That literature shows that the wa...

In this paper we explore the labor market returns to the General Education Development exam, or GED, using data from the Current Population Survey. We examine how the return to the GED varies between U.S. natives and the foreign-born who received their formal education outside of the U.S. We find that the foreign-schooled with a GED earn significantly higher wages than both foreign-schooled dro...

Wisconsin’s influential Learnfare initiative is a conditional cash penalty program that sanctions a family’s welfare grant when covered teens fail to meet school attendance targets. In the presence of reference-dependent preferences, Learnfare provides uniquely powerful financial incentives for student performance. However, a 10-county random-assignment evaluation suggested that Learnfare had n...

Wisconsin’s influential Learnfare initiative is a conditional cash penalty program that sanctions a family’s welfare grant when covered teens fail to meet school attendance targets. In the presence of reference-dependent preferences, Learnfare provides uniquely powerful financial incentives for student performance. However, a 10-county random-assignment evaluation suggested that Learnfare had n...

BACKGROUND In Luxembourg, the extensive phenomenon of school dropout is a prime policy concern in the light of individual, social and economic consequences. Although the authorities report an overall decrease of the national dropout rate, the proportion of early school leavers who remain without any specific occupation is still alarming. Therefore, this study intends a shift of focus from syste...