This paper investigates whether employers use university prestige as a signal of workers’ unobservable productivity. Our test is based on employer learning-statistical discrimination models, which suggest that if employers use university reputation to predict a worker’s unobservable quality, then college prestige should become less important for earnings as a worker gains labor market experience. In this framework, we use a regression discontinuity design to estimate a 13% wage premium for college graduates in their first year of the labor market who were barely accepted by one of the two most prestigious universities in Chile compared with those barely rejected by these two schools. However, we find that this premium decreases to 4% for workers with 6 or more years of labor market experience. This result suggests that college prestige becomes less important for employers as workers reveal their quality throughout their careers.

本文调查雇主是否利用大学声望作为工人不可观察的生产力的信号。我们的测试基于雇主学习统计歧视模型，该模型表明，如果雇主使用大学声誉来预测工人的不可观察的素质，那么随着工人获得劳动力市场经验，大学声誉对于收入的重要性应不再那么重要。在此框架中，我们使用回归不连续性设计来估计在劳动力市场第一年中，大学毕业生在智利两所最负盛名的大学中几乎没有被接受的大学毕业生，而这两个大学几乎没有接受的大学毕业生，其工资溢价为13％学校。但是，我们发现对于具有6年或以上劳动力市场经验的工人，保费降低至4％。