Rates of return to educational qualifications in the transitional economies

This paper presents a set of cross-country estimates on rates of return within a broadly comparable framework for a set of transitional economies that span Central and Eastern Europe, Russia and the Former Soviet Union countries of Central Asia. Our estimates reveal some tendency for rates to rise in most transitional economies over the period considered. The variability in the rates of return to higher education is seen to provide some explanation for the variability in wage inequality experienced across the set of transitional economies.