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    Education and allocation of skills in Tunisia: evidence from an education reform


    Pekkarinen, Tuomas and Pellicer, Miquel (2013) Education and allocation of skills in Tunisia: evidence from an education reform. IZA Journal of Labor & Development, 2 (14). ISSN 2193-9020

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    Abstract

    An often cited explanation for the weak growth effects of education in developing countries is the misallocation of educated workers to inefficient activities in the public sector. This paper assesses the strength of this argument by studying the effect of educational attainment on employment status of Tunisian men. We exploit policy changes that restricted access to secondary education in the 1970’s as an instrument for education and use data from 2004 Tunisian census as well as 2010 Labor Force Survey to estimate the effect of education on working in different sectors and within specific occupational categories. Consistently with the misallocation argument, we find that education increases employment, but that this increase is concentrated either in relatively low skill white collar occupations or in the public sector. Given that our instrument probably affected the academically weaker students this pattern of results suggests that the public sector might inefficiently reward titles.

    Item Type: Article
    Keywords: Returns to education; Middle East in North Africa; Public sector; Occupations;
    Academic Unit: Faculty of Social Sciences > Economics, Finance and Accounting
    Item ID: 12815
    Identification Number: https://doi.org/10.1186/2193-9020-2-14
    Depositing User: Miquel Pellicer
    Date Deposited: 27 Apr 2020 13:00
    Journal or Publication Title: IZA Journal of Labor & Development
    Publisher: SpringerOpen
    Refereed: Yes
    URI:
    Use Licence: This item is available under a Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial Share Alike Licence (CC BY-NC-SA). Details of this licence are available here

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