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Colm P. Harmon
Former Editor, Education and human capital

University of Sydney, Australia, and IZA, Germany

IZA World of Labor role

Author, Former Editor

Current position

Head of School of Economics, University of Sydney

Research interest

Economics of education, labor economics, applied economics policy

Website

https://www.iza.org/person/124/colm-p-harmon

Past positions

Professor, University College Dublin (2004–2012); Director, UCD Geary Institute, University College Dublin (2003–2012)

Qualifications

PhD Economics, University of Keele, 1997

Selected publications

  • “Measuring investment in human capital formation: An experimental analysis of early life outcomes.” Labour Economics (Forthcoming) (with O. Doyle, J. Heckman, C. Logue, and S. Moon).

  • “The impact of parental income and education on the schooling of their children.” IZA Journal of Labor Economics 2:8 (2013): 1–22 (with A. Chevalier, V. O’Sullivan, and I. Walker).

  • “Validating the use of vignettes for subjective threshold scales.” Journal of the Royal Statistical Society: Series A 174:3 (2011): 575–595 (with A. Van Soest, L. Delaney, A. Kapteyn, and J. P. Smith).

  • “Does education raise productivity or just reflect it?” Economic Journal (November 2004) (with A. Chevalier, I. Walker, and Y. Zhu).

  • “Estimates of the economic return to schooling for the UK.” American Economic Review 85:5 (1995): 1278–1296 (with I. Walker).

article(s)

  • How effective is compulsory schooling as a policy instrument?

    Changes in compulsory schooling laws have significant effects on certain population groups, but are costly to implement

    Colm P. Harmon, March 2017
    Compulsory schooling laws are a common policy tool to achieve greater participation in education, particularly from marginalized groups. Raising the compulsory schooling requirement forces students to remain in school which, on balance, is good for them in terms of labor market outcomes such as earnings. But the usefulness of this approach rests with how the laws affect the distribution of years of schooling, and the wider benefits of the increase in schooling. There is also evidence that such a policy has an intergenerational impact, which can help address persistence in poverty across generations.
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