Astronomics in action: the graduate earnings premium and the dragon effect in Singapore

This paper investigates the return to university education in Singapore using a new estimation strategy related to Chinese traditions where children born in the Year of the Dragon are believed to be superior. Because parents might time the arrival of their offspring on a Dragon year, this causes the Dragon cohort to be larger and university entry to be more competitive. First, we find evidence of a negative “Dragon effect” on university educational attainment. Then, using it as an estimation strategy, we find that university education has a ceteris paribus effect of raising earnings by at least 50% on average. (JEL I21, C26, J30)Nicholas Si