Return to Education and the Changing Role of Credentials in the Croatian Labor Market

The countries of Central and Eastern Europe experienced a rapid increase of return to education with the advent of the transition. We look at the dynamics of wage premiums in Croatia and estimate how much the return to education has changed between 1996 and 2004 on the basis of labor force survey data. We also extend the paper in order to address additional features of the wage structure, such as non-linearities in the return to education associated with attainment of credentials. We find that contrary to most transition countries, premiums for education in Croatia began to grow only after the mid 1990s. However, by 2004, they reached the levels of premiums found in other transition countries and advanced market economies, thus creating market incentives for investment in education. We also find that major part of this higher rate of return came through higher return to credentials.

Compositional Tables Analysis in Coordinates

Compositional tables – a continuous counterpart to the contingency tables – carry relative information about relationships between row and column factors; thus, for their analysis, only ratios between cells of a table are informative. Consequently, the standard Euclidean geometry should be replaced by the Aitchison geometry on the simplex that enables decomposition of the table into its independent and interactive parts. The aim of the paper is to find interpretable coordinate representation for independent and interaction tables (in sense of balances and odds ratios of cells, respectively), where further statistical processing of compositional tables can be performed. Theoretical results are applied to real‐world problems from a health survey and in macroeconomics.     

Chi-Squared Goodness-of-Fit Tests for Parametric Accelerated Failure Time Models

We give chi-squared goodness-of fit tests for parametric regression models such as accelerated failure time, proportional hazards, generalized proportional hazards, frailty models, transformation models, and models with cross-effects of survival functions. Random right censored data are used. Choice of random grouping intervals as data functions is considered.     

Contradictory tendencies in the political culture of Croatian youth: unexpected anomalies or an expected answer to the social crisis?

A successful democratic consolidation of post-socialist societies depends, among other things, on their citizens’ political culture, younger generations included. Moreover, youth civic engagement today and in the future is a guarantee of the continuity and development of democracy, which means that scientists need to gain insight into young people’s political culture. In this paper we look at political values, institutional trust and participation as relevant components of the civic political culture. The analysis is based on quantitative data collected in the empirical studies of Croatian youth, carried out between 1999 and 2013. Based on longitudinal study results, a downward trend is identified regarding selected political culture indicators: acceptance of liberal-democratic values, trust in social and political institutions, interest in politics and party preference. However, there is a simultaneous increase in participation in various types of organizations, especially political parties. The interpretation of established tendencies is placed in a broader context of an inherited democratic deficit, economic recession and social crisis. Current trends are both indicators and consequences of young people’s inadequate political socialization as well as weaknesses of political institutions and various actors during the transition and consolidation period.