Educational Choice and Labor Market Outcomes : Essays in Empirical Labor Economics

Abstract: The Importance of Education for the Reallocation of Labor: Evidence from Swedish Linked Employer-Employee Data 1986-2002Using employer-employee data covering the whole Swedish economy over a uniquely long time period from 1986 to 2002, we examine how job flows and worker flows have been distributed both on an aggregate level and across educa­tional levels. We find that job and worker flows vary by educational level, not only with respect to magnitude and variation, but with respect to direction as well. We find job reallocation to be countercyclical. However, when examining the correlations between different educational groups, the countercyclical behavior was only found among those with low educational level. Unemployment and Subsequent Earnings for Swedish College GraduatesThis paper shows that unemployment immediately upon college graduation is associated with substantial and permanent future earnings losses. The sample studied consists of all graduates from Stockholm and Uppsala University during 1991–1999; data used combine data from various administrative registers. The results are stable for the inclusion of a rich set of observable control variables, including the grade point average from high school and parental educational level, and for choice of method, i.e. OLS and propensity score matching. A Comparison of College Ranking Methods – A Study of Relative Earnings EstimatesThere are several studies on differences in returns to higher education focusing on old colleges versus new colleges founded after the great expansion of higher education in Sweden. The results vary substantially. This paper shows that the different results are not due to the different ways to control for student ability, as is often claimed. I find that the rankings of individual colleges are robust to choice of ability controls. However, when colleges are grouped into new and old colleges, the results vary, mainly as a result of just a few influential observations.