Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/20678 
Year of Publication: 
2004
Series/Report no.: 
IZA Discussion Papers No. 1382
Publisher: 
Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA), Bonn
Abstract: 
Do workers benefit from the education of their co-workers? This question is examined first by introducing a model of on-the-job schooling, which argues that educated workers may transfer part of their general skills to uneducated workers and that this spillover is affected by the degrees of non-excludability, irreversibility and generality of those skills. We then conduct an empirical analysis drawing on a matched panel of Portuguese firms and their workers. Schooling endogeneity is tackled by considering firm fixed effects and instruments based on schooling lags and the lagged share of retirement-age workers. We find evidence of large firm-level social returns (ranging between 14% and 23% – and thus exceeding standard estimates of private returns) and of significant returns accruing to less educated workers but not to their more educated colleagues.
Subjects: 
education
spillovers
matched employer-employee data
wages
endogenous growth
JEL: 
I20
J31
J24
Document Type: 
Working Paper

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