TY  - JOUR
AU  - Heckman,James
AU  - Vytlacil,Edward
TI  - Identifying the Role of Cognitive Ability in Explaining the Level of and Change in the Return to Schooling
JF  - National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper Series
VL  - No. 7820
PY  - 2000
Y2  - August 2000
UR  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w7820
L1  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w7820.pdf
N1  - Author contact info:
James J. Heckman
Department of Economics
The University of Chicago
1126 E. 59th Street
Chicago, IL 60637
Tel: 773/702-0634
Fax: 773/702-8490
E-Mail: jjh@uchicago.edu

Edward J. Vytlacil
Department of Economics
Yale University
Box 208281
New Haven, CT 06520-8281
Tel: 203/432-3244
Fax: 203/432-6167
E-Mail: edward.vytlacil@yale.edu
AB  - This paper considers two problems that arise in determining the role of ability in explaining the level of and change in the rate of return to schooling.  (1) Ability and schooling are so strongly dependent that it is not possible, over a wide range of variation in schooling and ability, to independently vary these two variables and estimate their separate impacts.  (2) The structure of panel data makes it difficult to identify main age and time effects or to isolate crucial education-ability-time interactions needed to assess the role of ability in explaining the rise in the return to education.
ER  -