The paper sheds some light on the education returns in Germany in the post war period. After describing higher education in Germany the current stand of higher education financing within the single states is presented. In six states tuition fees will be introduced in 2007/08 and discussions are going on in even some more. In the second part of the paper an empirical analysis is done using longitudinal data from the German social pension system. The analysis over the whole lifecycle renders results which proof that the higher education advantages are quite remarkable and might be a justification for more intensified financing by tuition fees. But all this has to be embedded into an encompassing strategy of tax and social policy, especially to prevent a strengthened process of social selection, which would be counterproductive for an increased and highly qualified human capital in Germany.

Der vorgestellte Beitrag gibt einen Überblick über die gegenwärtige Hochschulfinanzierung in Deutschland; kürzlich haben einige Bundesländer Studiengebühren eingeführt, die zu einer teilweisen Finanzierung der Studienkosten beitragen sollen. Im II. Kapitel werden außerdem kurz die finanziellen Strukturen der tertiären Ausbildung in den OECD-Ländern beschrieben. Dabei geht es vor allem um die Kostenaufteilung zwischen öffentlichem und privatem Sektor. Im III. Kapitel werden dann die Verteilungswirkungen des gegenwärtigen Finanzierungssystems kritisch hinterfragt. Dabei wird auch auf den Lebenseinkommensvorteil einer Hochschulausbildung im Detail eingegangen, bevor dann mögliche Auswirkungen einer Gebührenfinanzierung diskutiert werden. Es wird deutlich hervor gehoben, dass die Einführung von Studiengebühren in eine umfassende hochschul- und bildungspolitische Strategie eingebettet sein muss, damit eine negative Selektionswirkung auf die Jugendlichen aus Haushalten mit prekären Einkommen vermieden wird. / The paper sheds some light on the financial structures of higher education in Germany. Recently in several member states of Germany tuition fees have been introduced. Chapter II describes the current situation in Germany, the financial structures in the OECD countries and sheds some light on the higher education costs as well as parts to be borne by the public and private sector. Chapter III discussed the distributional impacts of the current German system and adds some information on the education returns in Germany in the post war period. The analysis over the whole lifecycle renders results which proof that the higher education advantages are quite remarkable and might be a justification for more intensified financing by tuition fees. But all this has to be embedded into an encompassing strategy of tax and social policy, especially to prevent a strengthened process of social selection, which would be counterproductive for an increased and highly qualified human capital in Germany.

Diese Arbeit beschäftigt sich dem Thema Studienfinanzierung. Zuerst richtet sich der Fokus auf die Analyse des Gutes Hochschulausbildung. Anschließend werden die Finanzierungsmöglichkeiten der Studierenden aufgezeigt, wobei den Krediten eine besondere Aufmerksamkeit zukommt. Die Analyse der Finanzierungssysteme in den USA und Australien ist ebenfalls Bestandteil der vorliegenden Arbeit. Hier richtet sich das Augenmerk auf die Entwicklung der Studiengebühren und die angebotenen Finanzierungsmöglichkeiten. Daran anschließend erfolgt eine Darstellung der Auswirkungen des jahrelang gebührenfrei angebotenen Hochschulstudiums in Deutschland. In diesem Zusammenhang werden die Finanzierungsstruktur deutscher Hochschulen, die soziale Zusammensetzung der Studierenden und die Akademikerquote beleuchtet. Zum Abschluss erfolgt eine empirische Untersuchung der Lebenseinkommen verschiedener Bildungsgruppen in Deutschland und damit verbunden eine Berechnung der Bildungsrenditen bestimmter Ausbildungsniveaus. / This work is directed at the theme financing of higher education. The first view goes to the analysis of the good higher education. Following, the ways of financing higher Education will be presented, in which the loans play a particular role. The breakdown of the financing schemes in the USA and Australia is a part of this work as well. In this section the history of tuition fees and the offered financing proposals are disclosed. Afterwards a presentation of the impacts of the long lasting tuition free higher education in Germany occurs. In this context the financing structure in German universities, the social composition of students at German universities and the percentage of graduates are outlined. An empirical analysis of the lifetime income from different education groups and the calculation of education returns of particular education levels in Germany conclude this work.

The paper is based on an individual life-cycle model, which describes the purely economic components of human capital. The present value of human capital is determined by all future income flows, which at the same time constitute the individual as well as the total tax base of a nation. Therefore, the income of the productive population determines the total tax revenue, which is spent for public goods (including education) and transfers (for poverty reduction). The efficient design of the education system (by private and public education investments) determines the quality of the human capital stock as well as the future gross income flows. The costs of public goods and the transfer expenditures have to be financed from the total tax revenue, which also affects the individual tax burden via the specific tax bases and tax rates. Especially the redistribution of income is connected with serious disincentives, influencing the preferences for work and leisure as well as for consumption and saving. An efficient tax and transfer system being accompanied by an education system financed in public private partnership, which treats equally labor and capital income, sets positive incentives for the formation of human, financial, and real capital. An important prerequisite for a sustainable growth process is the efficient design of the social security system, being based on the family as well as a collective risk equalization scheme. If that system is diminishing absolute poverty in an appropriate time period by transfers and vocational education measures for the grown-up as well as high quality primary, secondary and tertiary education programs for the children, the transfer expenditure would decrease and the tax bases (income and consumption) increase, lowering the burden on the productive population. For the first time, this micro model presented in this paper pools all the relevant variables for development within a simple life-cycle model, which can also be used for a powerful analysis of the current failures in existing tax and transfer schemes and fruitful empirical investigations. Hence, an efficient tax and transfer scheme strongly contributes to an improved national position in the global competition.

The purpose of this thesis is to analyze the influence of knowledge on the export performance of firms in different regions. More specifically, this study focuses on the impact of knowledge on the structure of regional export flows, in terms of horizontal and vertical product differentiation, as well as the geographical distribution of export flows. The thesis consists of four separate papers, which contribute to the overall analysis of knowledge, product differentiation and international trade in different ways. The second chapter presents a study of the effects of regional accessibility to R&D on the diversity of export flows with regard to goods, firms and destination markets. Chapter 3 provides an empirical analysis of vertical product differentiation, i.e. differentiation in terms of product quality, and examines the impact of educated labor and R&D on regional comparative advantages in goods of relatively high product quality. Chapter 4 contains a study of how the regional endowment of highly educated workers affects the structure of export flows, i.e. how the endowment of educated workers impacts on the number of product varieties exported, the average price per variety and the average quantity shipped out. The final chapter presents a micro-level analysis of firms’ propensity to participate in international markets and their propensity to expand export activities by introducing new export products or establishing export links with new destination countries. In summary, the empirical results of this thesis convey the message that regional accessibility to knowledge, embodied in highly educated labor and/or developed through R&D activities, plays a fundamental role in shaping the content and structure of regional export flows. More specifically, the present empirical observations suggest that the regional endowment of knowledge stimulates the size of the export base in terms of exporting firms and number of product varieties. The recurring significance of the accessibility variables in explaining spatial export patterns show that the knowledge endowment of a region must be defined in such ways that it captures sources of potential knowledge spillovers from inside as well as outside its own regional boundaries. This outcome shows that regional variations in knowledge endowments originate both in the actual spatial distribution of a nation’s knowledge labor across regions, and in regional differences in the geographical accessibility to internal and external knowledge labor.

The thesis consists of a summary and four self-contained papers. Paper [I] examines the effects of interregional migration on gross earnings in married and cohabiting couples. In particular, we examine the link between education level and income gains. We find that pre-migration education level is a key determinant of migration and economic outcomes and is also a determinant of the effect of migration on income distribution within the household. The positive average effect on household earnings is largely explained by income gains among highly-educated males. Females generally experience no significant income gain from migration in absolute terms. Paper [II] analyzes the effect of the spouse’s education on individual earnings. In this study, we control for time-invariant heterogeneity that may be correlated with the spouse’s education level and use a rich data set that includes observations of individuals when they are single and when they are married. The results support the hypothesis of cross-productivity for both males and females. Furthermore, couples with education within the same field experience even larger effects. In Paper [III] we aim to study how the spouse’s productivity in the labor market affects one’s own individual earnings when married. Using longitudinal data on individuals as both single and married allows us to estimate the spouses’ productivity as single persons and thereby avoid problems of endogeneity between the two spouses’ labor market performances. Productivity is approximated with residuals from estimates of pre-marriage earnings equations. Results indicate that there are negative effects of the spouse’s productivity on individual earnings for both males and females, and that this effect appears to be enhanced by the duration of the marriage. Paper [IV] studies spousal matching on earnings for females in secondorder marriages. We aim to follow women who marry, divorce, and subsequently remarry compared with females who marry and stay married over the course of the study interval. Overall, we find significant positive correlations for all three of the marital partitions. The correlation tends to be smaller for the first of a sequence of marriages for women who divorce than for women who marry and stay so. For the second of the successive marriages, however, the correlation of the residuals is larger than that for women who marry but once.

The purpose of this thesis is to analyze the effect of human capital in Swedish export. Human capital is here expressed as the number of employees in the private sector per municipality with university education of at least three years. Two regression models were tested with aggregated export value/municipality and export value per kilo/municipality as dependent variables. Human capital as well as the total accessibility to R&D was assumed to have a positive impact on the Swedish export performance. During the last decades many economists have attached great importance to education, knowledge and investments in R&D. Sweden is in general abundant in human capital and have also several world leading companies characterized by knowledge intensive production and export. According to the Product Life Cycle Theory, Sweden should focus on the first phase that requires high input of human capital and product competition to maintain the competitiveness in the international market. The results indicate as expected that the access to human capital as well as accessibility to R&D have a positive impact on the Swedish aggregated export value and export value per kilo. The assumption about human capital being even more important in high value export could not be confirmed by the results. Innovation promoting investments together with continuous efforts to improve innovation nets and interaction possibilities are presumed to be important factors for Swedish competitiveness also in the future.

Fast changes and external demands have made companies to continuously needing to improve their performance. Banks in particular have come to make a complete changeover to keep up with the competition. They have gone from bureaucratic structures to become more sales oriented. This has come to affect the management model banks use, meaning that the tools to control and navigate the company had to be modernized and adapted to measure new activities. Before the structure change, it was usually enough for a bank to use financial measurements only focusing on indicators such as ROI, when measuring performance. Today, banks have realized the value of the company’s employees, they are a crucial factor for reaching success. Therefore the banks have realized that they need to measure the employees performance. By measuring the employees the bank will be able to know how to improve their performance in order to reach greater success. However, measuring the employees performance has backsides, in some cases it has created unwanted behavior. My problem definitions goes: How are the Swedish banks motives to reach sales goals, creating a conflict between employees actions towards customer relations and banks results? My purpose is to increase my and banks understanding in how sales goals affect the employees and their actions in a bank. I will increase my and banks understanding by finding what factors with the sales goals foster a certain behavior. I am also interested in finding a way to prevent certain behavior that occurs with sales goals. In order to answer my purpose I have conducted seven qualitative un-structured interviews with bank employees. I believe that I can take part of their reality by interpreting their answers. Therefore I argue for a hermeneutic view. The theoretical framework includes theories which I believe are relevant in order to increase my understand about the situation. The theoretical framework will be brought together with the seven interviews and together they will act as a platform for my analysis. I have conducted unstructured interviews, consisting of one sales manager and six bank employees. The interviews were conducted in one company, the purpose was to understand the actions in one context. During these interviews I used an interview guide as an aid. I found that employees are affected by the sales goals due to the fact that they have not participated in deciding them. Meaning that the goals are not of much value for them. Furthermore I found that the employees perceive that the bank is neglecting them, which I found was a result of how the manager values the management model. The behavior of the employees is affected by what parts of the management model the manager chooses to communicate.

Problem:      Vad anser arbetsgivare om vikten av att investera i humankapital genom att anställa välutbildad personal? Vilka kunskaper har rekryterare om ekonomiutbildningarnas innehåll och examensnivåer?   Syfte:            Syftet med denna uppsats är att utreda arbetsgivarnas policy vad gäller investering i humankapital vid anställning, examensnivåns betydelse vid anställning till ekonomitjänster samt rekryterarnas kunskaper om ekonomiutbildningarnas innehåll.   Metod:          En kvalitativ studie som bygger på sekundärdata genomfördes med fem personer som rekryterar ekonomer inom olika branscher. Dessa personer ansågs kunna bidra med relevant information för att besvara studiens syfte. Primärdata sammanställdes vilket sedan ledde till analys och studiens slutsats.   Slutsats:        Högskoleutbildning är grundkravet för att få ett arbete som ekonom men examensnivån har en mindre betydelse. Personlighet och erfarenhet är viktigare och det som premieras är prestationer och ansvarstagande. Arbetsgivare tycker att det är viktigt att investera i humankapital. Graden av hur insatta rekryterare är i ekonomiutbildningarnas innehåll skiljer sig åt. / Problem:      What do employers think about the importance of investment in human capital by hiring well-educated staff? Which knowledge do recruiters have about the content of economy education and degree levels?   Purpose:       The purpose of this study is to investigate employer’s policy when it comes to investment in human capital when hiring, the importance of degree level when hiring employees to economy jobs and the recruiters’ knowledge about the content of economy education.   Method:       A qualitative study, based on secondary data, was carried out with five persons who recruit economists to different industries. These people were believed to be able to contribute to answer the purpose of the study. Primary data were compiled which then lead up to the analysis and the conclusions of the study.   Conclusion:  University education is the basic request to get a job as economist but the degree level has a minor significance. Personality and experience are more important and what’s rewarded is performance and responsibility taking. Employers think that it’s important to invest in human capital. The degree of how much the recruiters are informed about the content of economy education varies.

This bachelor thesis aims to uncover the determinants of the economic growth in Mexico with an exogenous growth model. The study is based in an Augmented Solow Model em-ployed by Mankiw, Romer and Weil in "A contribution to the Empirics of the Economic Growth" (1992). The model uses annual data of Mexico from 1960-2007 and the regressions and tests are developed in the econometric package Stata 10 for eight different periods. The thesis not only uses the Effective Labour and Physical Capital as Inputs in the production Function, but also employs the variable of Human Capital as an economic determinant of growth in the production function. The results of the model correspond with the actual scenario in Mexico; more weight to the Effective Labour (76.34%) rather than to Human Capital (2.12%) or Physical Capital (21.54%) as determinants of growth.