Employer Learning and the Dynamics of Returns to Universities: Evidence from Chinese Elite Education during University Expansion
本文估计了中国当代大学毕业生职业生涯中精英大学教育的回报，发现入职时存在显著溢价，但在早期职业生涯中迅速下降，之后回升，且这一模式主要由1999年扩招后的群体驱动。
This paper estimates the return to an elite-university education over a college graduate’s career in contemporary China. After allowing for university selectivity by including individual admission scores, we find a substantial premium for graduating from an elite Chinese university at the job entry that declines quickly in early career before starting to return. Results are entirely driven by cohorts entering college after the 1999 higher-education expansion. The pattern is more pronounced in coastal provinces and in economically more developed regions. The results are consistent with predictions of asymmetric employer-learning models.