Education and the labor market in Colombiathree empirical essays

Resumen

This doctoral thesis consists of three empirical essays related to the Colombian economy, more precisely, to the Educational system and to the Labor Market in Colombia. The first essay studies the determinants of math and reading student¿s performance as well as the gender score gap in Pisa tests in Colombia. The role of personal, familiar and school characteristics as well as macroeconomic and cultural variables are considered. The Educational level of the parents, the mother¿s working condition and the fact of being a public or private school are the most important indicators to explain educational achievement in Colombia, a country with one of the poorest performance in these tests. Moreover, cultural measures related to gender equity would help reduce the gender score gap in Colombia, which is the highest one among the participating countries. The second essay analyzes the effects of fixed-term contracts on workers. Results reveal that women, young, low-educated workers, in the private sector and in Agriculture, Livestock and Mines and in the Manufacturing Industry are most likely to have fixed-term contracts. Additionally, an important wage penalty against fixed-term contract workers (between 10-15%), remains despite control for a set of personal, demographic and job characteristics as well as for differences in unobserved productivity of workers. Finally, the last essay studies the role of education, type of contract and public employment on the gender wage gap. It is found that the enormous increase in educational attainment has helped reduce the gender wage gap, mainly at the top of the wage distribution. By contrast, the reduction in the proportion of workers in the public sector and the reduction of workers with indefinite contracts have contributed to increasing it.