TY - JOUR AU - Acosta, Pablo AU - Cruces, Guillermo AU - Galiani, Sebastian AU - Gasparini, Leonardo PY - 2019 DA - 2019/12/11 TI - Educational upgrading and returns to skills in Latin America: evidence from a supply–demand framework JO - Latin American Economic Review SP - 18 VL - 28 IS - 1 AB - This paper documents the evolution of wage differentials and the supply of workers by educational level for sixteen Latin American countries over the period 1991–2013. We find a pattern of rather constant rise in the relative supply of skilled and semi-skilled workers over the period. Whereas the returns to secondary education fell over time, in contrast, the returns to tertiary education display a remarkable changing pattern common to almost all economies: significant increase in the 1990s, strong fall in the 2000s, and a deceleration of that fall in the 2010s. We conclude that supply-side factors seem to have limited explanatory power relative to demand-side factors in accounting for changes in the wage gap between workers with tertiary education and the rest. SN - 2196-436X UR - https://doi.org/10.1186/s40503-019-0080-6 DO - 10.1186/s40503-019-0080-6 ID - Acosta2019 ER -