Diploma Effects by Gender in the Spanish Labour Market

The aim of this paper is to contrast the nature of the schooling effect on earnings in the Spanish labour market in terms of gender. Hungerford and Solon's (Review of Economics and Statistics 69: 175-177, 1987) methodology is used to distinguish between the returns to schooling arising from mere years of schooling as a reflection of their productivity-enhancing contribution (human capital) and the returns to schooling arising from certificates (diploma effects) as signals of the individual's productivity (sheepskin effects) or as credentialism. The results show evidence only of diploma effects in Upper Secondary Studies for men.