DFG funding for research project of junior professorship Economics 2

04/04/2022

Learning about the Causes of Monetary Returns to Education across Educational Trajectories

With this research project, we want to give deeper insight about how monetary returns to education develop over the life course. A new dataset containing information about school openings in Germany allows us to use local changes in school supply on the municipal level and estimate causal effects of attending a Gymnasium (academic track school) on wages. The link between survey data and administrative register data with information on wages and labor supply should serves as the data basis.

Specifically we want to answer in particular two research questions. First, we want to analyze in how far academic track and university education complement each other. Thereby we answer the question if attending a Gymnasium is only the requirement for university education or if the abilities taught at these schools are valuable themselves. For this purpose, we want to apply a newly developed causal mediation analysis that uses both school openings and university foundations as instrumental variables to separate both educational effects from each other.

The second research question we examine focusses on the explicit changes in the returns to academic track education along the employment course. In perfectly competitive labor markets where the marginal productivity of employees is observed by firms, changes in the returns to education must be driven solely by changes in the marginal productivity. However, the marginal productivity of employees directly after entering the labor market is not or only hardly observable for employers. Therefore changes in the returns to education can also be caused by a learning process of employers. The purpose of this project is to estimate this learning process with econometric methods.

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Location & approach

By car

The campus of TU Dortmund University is located close to interstate junction Dortmund West, where the Sauerlandlinie A 45 (Frankfurt-Dortmund) crosses the Ruhrschnellweg B 1 / A 40. The best interstate exit to take from A 45 is "Dortmund-Eichlinghofen" (closer to Campus Süd), and from B 1 / A 40 "Dortmund-Dorstfeld" (closer to Campus Nord). Signs for the university are located at both exits. Also, there is a new exit before you pass over the B 1-bridge leading into Dortmund.

To get from Campus North to Campus South by car, there is the connection via Vogelpothsweg/Baroper Straße. We recommend you leave your car on one of the parking lots at Campus North and use the H-Bahn (suspended monorail system), which conveniently connects the two campuses.

By bus, subway and train

TU Dortmund University has its own train station ("Dortmund Universität"). From there, suburban trains (S-Bahn) leave for Dortmund main station ("Dortmund Hauptbahnhof") and Düsseldorf main station via the "Düsseldorf Airport Train Station" (take S-Bahn number 1, which leaves every 20 or 30 minutes). The university is easily reached from Bochum, Essen, Mülheim an der Ruhr and Duisburg.

You can also take the bus or subway train from Dortmund city to the university: From Dortmund main station, you can take any train bound for the Station "Stadtgarten", usually lines U41, U45, U 47 and U49. At "Stadtgarten" you switch trains and get on line U42 towards "Hombruch". Look out for the Station "An der Palmweide". From the bus stop just across the road, busses bound for TU Dortmund University leave every ten minutes (445, 447 and 462). Another option is to take the subway routes U41, U45, U47 and U49 from Dortmund main station to the stop "Dortmund Kampstraße". From there, take U43 or U44 to the stop "Dortmund Wittener Straße". Switch to bus line 447 and get off at "Dortmund Universität S".

The H-Bahn (Suspended Monorail System)

The H-Bahn is one of the hallmarks of TU Dortmund University. There are two stations on Campus Nord. One ("Dortmund Universität S") is directly located at the suburban train stop, which connects the university directly with the city of Dortmund and the rest of the Ruhr Area. Also from this station, there are connections to the "Technologiepark" and (via Campus Süd) Eichlinghofen. The other station is located at the dining hall at Campus Nord and offers a direct connection to Campus Süd every five minutes.

By airplane

The AirportExpress is a fast and convenient means of transport from Dortmund Airport (DTM) to Dortmund Central Station, taking you there in little more than 20 minutes. From Dortmund Central Station, you can continue to the university campus by interurban railway (S-Bahn). A larger range of international flight connections is offered at Düsseldorf Airport (DUS), which is about 60 kilometres away and can be directly reached by S-Bahn from the university station.

At campus

The facilities of TU Dortmund University are spread over two campuses, the larger Campus North and the smaller Campus South. Additionally, some areas of the university are located in the adjacent "Technologiepark".