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
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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