During a lifetime an individual is faced with the decision whether or not to pursue additional years of education, and one may ask if this will generate some sort of payoff, for example, if higher earnings is to be received later in life. The aim of this paper is to investigate how an individual’s earnings is affected by the amount of years one spends in school and also to see if gender and experience are contributing factors. We will investigate these relationships by first introducing the two theories “Human Capital” and “The Mincer Equation”. These build upon each other and are connected. Thereafter, modifications of the Standard Mincer equation will develop our four different regression equations. These regressions will be run on an American cross-sectional data set, by use of the Ordinary Least Squares (OLS). Our chosen explanatory variables do affect earnings and the specific data set shows that additional years of schooling do increase earnings. We also found a distinct difference in hourly earnings between men and women.

Do men and women receive different pay-offs, in terms of wage, from cognitive skills in the Swedish labor market? To answer this, the classical Mincer equation is expanded with a variable for cognitive skills (literacy and numeracy) and an interaction term between being a male and cognitive skills to be able to distinguish the actual difference in pay-off. I use data from OECD’s PIAAC survey of adult skills, which provides a unique opportunity to examine gender pay-off differences concerning cognitive skills. The results show that men have a larger pay-off than women once occupation is sufficiently controlled for

Esse trabalho traz os resultados do retorno salarial de se investir em educação no Brasil e desagregado para cada Estado da Unidade da Federação. Diferentes técnicas econométricas foram estimadas, como Mincer, Mincer Adaptado, Método de Variáveis Instrumentais, Método de Heckman e por fim Metodologia de Hansen (2000) que permite inovar a idéia de não linearidade na equação de rendimento proposta por Jaccob Mincer estimada de forma endógena. A analise empírica foi feita com base nas PNAD´s de 2001 a 2008 com dados em dados cross-section. Os resultados apresentados diferenciam em magnitude de cada método econométrico utilizado em destaque o Método de Hansen que permitiu identificar limiares em que o retorno de se investir em educação muda a partir de certo nível de escolaridade quebrada a hipótese de linearidade. Implicando que a não consideração de tal hipótese pode acabar distorcendo a compreensão da função que a educação em si exerce, por exemplo, na distribuição de renda. / This paper presents the results of the wage return of investing in education in Brazil and the disaggregated for each member of the Office of the Federation. Others Different from econometric were estimated as Mincer, Mincer Adapted, All Variable Instrumental, Method of Heckman and finally Methodology Hansen (2000) to innovation to go from no linearity in the equation the revenue proposed by Mincer Jaccob estimated and endogen. The analysis empiric was based on PNAD´s from 2001 to 2008 data with data in cross-section. The presented results differ in magnitude for each method used econometric highlighted the method of which Hansen identified thresholds at which the return of investing in education change it from a certain point of education to broken hypothesis linearity. Implying that if consideration in such a hypothesis can end up distorting the understanding of the function what education the exercise it, for example, distribution the income.

Esse trabalho traz os resultados do retorno salarial de se investir em educação no Brasil e desagregado para cada Estado da Unidade da Federação. Diferentes técnicas econométricas foram estimadas, como Mincer, Mincer Adaptado, Método de Variáveis Instrumentais, Método de Heckman e por fim Metodologia de Hansen (2000) que permite inovar a idéia de não linearidade na equação de rendimento proposta por Jaccob Mincer estimada de forma endógena. A analise empírica foi feita com base nas PNAD´s de 2001 a 2008 com dados em dados cross-section. Os resultados apresentados diferenciam em magnitude de cada método econométrico utilizado em destaque o Método de Hansen que permitiu identificar limiares em que o retorno de se investir em educação muda a partir de certo nível de escolaridade quebrada a hipótese de linearidade. Implicando que a não consideração de tal hipótese pode acabar distorcendo a compreensão da função que a educação em si exerce, por exemplo, na distribuição de renda. / This paper presents the results of the wage return of investing in education in Brazil and the disaggregated for each member of the Office of the Federation. Others Different from econometric were estimated as Mincer, Mincer Adapted, All Variable Instrumental, Method of Heckman and finally Methodology Hansen (2000) to innovation to go from no linearity in the equation the revenue proposed by Mincer Jaccob estimated and endogen. The analysis empiric was based on PNAD´s from 2001 to 2008 data with data in cross-section. The presented results differ in magnitude for each method used econometric highlighted the method of which Hansen identified thresholds at which the return of investing in education change it from a certain point of education to broken hypothesis linearity. Implying that if consideration in such a hypothesis can end up distorting the understanding of the function what education the exercise it, for example, distribution the income.

Esse trabalho traz os resultados do retorno salarial de se investir em educação no Brasil e desagregado para cada Estado da Unidade da Federação. Diferentes técnicas econométricas foram estimadas, como Mincer, Mincer Adaptado, Método de Variáveis Instrumentais, Método de Heckman e por fim Metodologia de Hansen (2000) que permite inovar a idéia de não linearidade na equação de rendimento proposta por Jaccob Mincer estimada de forma endógena. A analise empírica foi feita com base nas PNAD´s de 2001 a 2008 com dados em dados cross-section. Os resultados apresentados diferenciam em magnitude de cada método econométrico utilizado em destaque o Método de Hansen que permitiu identificar limiares em que o retorno de se investir em educação muda a partir de certo nível de escolaridade quebrada a hipótese de linearidade. Implicando que a não consideração de tal hipótese pode acabar distorcendo a compreensão da função que a educação em si exerce, por exemplo, na distribuição de renda. / This paper presents the results of the wage return of investing in education in Brazil and the disaggregated for each member of the Office of the Federation. Others Different from econometric were estimated as Mincer, Mincer Adapted, All Variable Instrumental, Method of Heckman and finally Methodology Hansen (2000) to innovation to go from no linearity in the equation the revenue proposed by Mincer Jaccob estimated and endogen. The analysis empiric was based on PNAD´s from 2001 to 2008 data with data in cross-section. The presented results differ in magnitude for each method used econometric highlighted the method of which Hansen identified thresholds at which the return of investing in education change it from a certain point of education to broken hypothesis linearity. Implying that if consideration in such a hypothesis can end up distorting the understanding of the function what education the exercise it, for example, distribution the income.

Return to education and regional differences have been amply studied in the literature, in particular by Human Capital and New Economic Geography studies. A combination of both these perspectives was not examined in the case of Italy regarding the North vs. South gap. The purpose of this thesis is to go one step further and to analyze regional differences in return to education across five macro-regions in Italy. The country’s unification is relatively recent, and this leads to expect that regional differences might be very high in magnitude. Mainly studies about Italy consider it merely from a North versus South perspective, identifying in the former the most advanced region both from an income and from an educational point of view. The regions in analysis are dividing the country into five areas that resemble its subdivision before the unification, hence the expectation to capture more insights about the difference respect to a North-South gap. The data are unbalanced panel data consisting of 8 variables, collected every second year for 20 years, for 7254 individuals, followed over time. The focus of this thesis is five regional analyses of the Mincer’s equation, one per each Italian macro-region. The results present significant differences in returns to education across regions, identifying the North-West and the South the leading ones, the North-East and the Center as in-betweens, and the Islands as lagging behind.