Returns to educational investments in a transitional economy: An investigation of Kazakhstan's labor market in 2005

The literature in development economics and labor economics includes many studies of the importance of and rewards to training and education of workers, for both employers and employees. This dissertation develops a graph showing the occupational educational requirement levels from advertisements from both public and private occupations and presents salaries associated with these educational levels. The study constructs a product curve points thereby creating a new and original research data set, and then test its slope to see if that curve corresponded to Lucas's assumption of nondecreasing returns to scale. The resulting work could be an addition to scholarly writings since there appear to have been no tests of Lucas' assumption via this method. The study thus provides empirical results concerning the returns to education that are relevant to one of the major economic events of the late 20 th century, the 1992 dissolution of the command-driven Soviet economy and subsequent restructuring of the economies of the former Soviet republics, as well as contributing to the wider literature on transitional economies. Issues surrounding education and training are especially pertinent in developing economies because the basic economic models taught to and applied by managers change dramatically during the development process. The dissertation should prove helpful and contributes to discussions of the appropriate development model for Kazakhstan and of education policies in Kazakhstan.