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00:00 | Defense - MAER
Supik Lukáš “Estimation of Peer Effects Model with Selective Assignment of Pupils into Classes”
Master Thesis Chair:
Daniel Münich
Abstract:
People are by nature social beings. Most of us have a complex social network that connects us with other people in numerous aspects of our lives: neighbours, co-workers or peers in schools, and friends. Moreover, it is widely believed that people’s behaviour is to some extent affected by others in their social networks, which is known as peer effects. Therefore, a precise understanding of the behaviour of an individual necessarily includes understanding her interactions with others within her social network.
The first part of this thesis, literature review, summarizes contemporary research on peer effects, shows which aspects of human behaviour may be affected by social interactions, and highlights the importance of peer effects research. In the second part, the estimation of the linearin-means peer effects model, we provide a detailed description of the model, derivations of its alternative formulations, and show the identification conditions. The main contribution of the second part is that we provide a step-by-step analysis of the linear-in-means peer effects model and detailed proofs of theorems in one place.
The third part provides an empirical analysis of peer effects in education in the Czech Republic. In particular, we examine how the test scores of pupils are affected by their classmates. We observe that pupils’ test scores are negatively affected by the test scores of their peers and positively affected by the abilities of their peers. The results are statistically significant; however, they are also excessively high compared with previous research. Therefore, we conduct bootstrap simulation and find that the estimators of standard errors are probably underestimated. Moreover, we conduct a placebo check randomly allocating pupils among classes and show that widely used peer effects estimators are slightly biased in both directions, which could explain high and significant peer effects estimators. Therefore, we conclude that corrected peer effects estimators are likely unsignificant in our setting, which is mainly caused by the small data sample. Finally, we briefly propose possible extensions of the linear-in-means peer effects model, which may give a more realistic description of peer effects in real world.
00:00 | Defense - MAER
09:00 | Defense - MAER
MA in Economic Research: Theses defenses
Let us invite you to the theses defenses of our MA in Economic Research students which are going to take place in room #6.
Defense Committee:
Jan Hanousek, Ole Jann, Andreas Menzel
Student: Lukáš Supik
Title of Thesis: Economics of Skill Formation
Student: Margarita Pavlova
Title of Thesis: Effect of Recession on Labor Market Outcomes of College Graduates in the Czech Republic
Student: Evgeniya Dubinina
Title of Thesis: Impact of Special Economic Zones on the Domestic Market: Evidence from Russia
12:00 | Defense - MAER
Master Thesis Chair:
Štěpán Jurajda
Abstract:
This paper examines the effect of graduating from college during a recession on labor market outcomes in the Czech Republic, where tertiary education is mostly state-funded. I focus on workers who entered the labor market during 2006-2015, a period including the financial crisis and recession of 2008 and the subsequent recovery period. As an indicator of economic conditions, I use overall and youth unemployment rates. I find that an increase in the unemployment rate by 4 percentage points is associated with approximately a 8% reduction of annual earnings in the first year after graduation. Additionally, I study two channels of earnings’ reduction: the probability of being employed and probability of being employed in a “college” occupation after graduation. Both probabilities diminish significantly with an increase in unemployment rates. Overall, my results demonstrate that graduation at the time of recession has a significant negative impact on labor market outcomes of workers.
Keywords: Business Cycle, College Graduates, Cohort Effects
13:30 | Defense - PhD
Jakub Grossmann: "Essays on Local Labor Markets"
Defense Committee:
Mariola Pytliková (chair)
Vasily Korovkin
Michal Franta (Czech National Bank)
Referees:
Tor Eriksson (Aarhus University)
Kamil Galuščák (Czech National Bank)
Dissertation Committee:
Štěpán Jurajda (chair)
Christian Ochsner
Filip Pertold
Nikolas Mittag
Daniel Münich
Filer Randall (The City University of New York)
Abstract:
This thesis studies local labor markets affected by policy reforms, and shocks to health and migration. The effects studied in the three essays operate locally and are important for workers' labor-market outcomes, for family health members, and for long-term identity of local communities. The thesis contributes to existing empirical research by proposing new identification approaches and using new sources of variation. The essays quantify policy effects, some of them multigenerational, and ask about the underlying mechanisms behind the estimated effects. Each chapter focuses on a specific topic related to local labor markets or local communities in the Czech Republic.
In the first paper, I study the employment effects of four minimum wage increases implemented in the Czech Republic during 2012-2017, which cumulatively increased the national minimum wage by 37 percent. I analyze outcomes at the level of firm-occupation-county-specific job cells and apply an intensity-treatment estimator similar to that of Machin et al. (2003). My preferred specifications suggest that minimum wage increases led to higher wages for low-paid workers and did not have significant impacts on their rates of employment.
The second paper argues that a system of sick-pay is critical for balancing the economic and health costs of infectious diseases. Surprisingly, most research on sick-pay reforms does not rely on variation in worker exposure to diseases when investigating absences from work. This paper studies the effects on work absences of changes in health-insurance coverage for the first three days of sickness. I explore geographic variations in the prevalence of infectious diseases, primarily the seasonal flu, to identify variations in the need for sickness insurance. Estimates based on the Czech Structure of Earnings Survey imply that when sickness insurance is not available, total hours of work missed are not affected, but employees rely on paid and unpaid leave instead of sick-leave. The substitution effects are heterogenous across occupations and socio-demographic characteristics of employees, and suggest that workers do not spread infectious diseases at their workplaces as a result of a lack of sickness insurance coverage in the first three days of an illness.
In the third paper we study how staying minorities who evaded ethnic cleansing integrate into re-settled communities. After World War Two, three million ethnic Germans were expelled from Czechoslovakia's Sudetenland, but some were allowed to stay, many of whom were left-leaning anti-fascists. We study quasiexperimental local variation in the number of anti-fascist Germans staying in post-war Czechoslovakia and find a long-lasting footprint: Communist party support, party cell frequencies, and far-left values and social policies are more prevalent today in locations where anti-fascist Germans stayed in larger numbers. Our findings also suggest that political identity supplanted German ethnic identity among stayers who faced new local ethnic majorities.
Full Text: "Essays on Local Labor Markets"
