Determinación salarialEducación y habilidad. Análisis teórico y empírico del caso español.

Abstract

The framework of this thesis is the Economics Education area. It includes a short introduction, four central chapters and a concluding section. The first chapter offers a detailed theoretical survey of the Human Capital Theory (schooling as an individual productivity enhancing mechanism) and the Signalling Hypothesis (schooling as a signal or filter of previous innate abilities). In addition there is a section that provides some introductory concepts about psychology that are needed in the next charters. Second chapter surveys the different empirical approaches about the role of the ability and the Signalling Hypothesis in the wage setting. In addition, it is pointed out to the main problems in the empirical test of the Human Capital Theory jointly with the solutions provided in the literature. The third chapter, the newest part of the thesis, presents two measures of the individual ability based on the observed differences in education among the different Spanish Provinces and assuming that the cost of schooling is different in each of these provinces. The effects of these two measures in the wage settings are tested. In the fourth chapter results of some test of the Signalling Hypothesis not previously applied to the Spanish case are presented. Moreover, it is started a study about some individual non-academic abilities and their reward in the labour market. Public and private sector differences are studied because it is supposed that signalling and non-academic abilities might have a different role in these sectors. Finally, the conclusions are presented. The main result of this thesis point to the Human Capital Theory validity despite that some signalling effects are found in the Secondary Education. Implications for educational policy are discussed