Priceless: The Nonpecuniary Benefits of Schooling

摘要

Economists usually view schooling as a financial investment: that is, individuals spend money and time to acquire (or perhaps signal) human capital, in hopes of greater lifetime wealth and consumption in return. This approach has been hugely successful in explaining labor market behavior. It has helped simplify macro and micro models by reducing the number of required parameters, making it easier to estimate them with readily available data and computing power. Focusing on schooling as a financial investment has also encouraged the development of innovative empirical techniques for convincingly estimating average monetary returns from additional high school or college.