Empirical Labor Economics
On Friday 16 March 2018 Antonio Dalla-Zuanna will hold a trial lecture on a prescribed topic and defend his thesis for the PhD degree at NHH.
Prescribed topic for the trial lecture:
Discuss different theories for the question of the effect of work-related networks on earnings, and explain how they can be tested empirically
Trial lecture:
10:15 in Karl Borch Aud., NHH
Title of the thesis:
Essays in Empirical Labor Economics
Summary:
This doctoral dissertation addresses different topics related to the labor market and to the accumulation of human capital from an empirical perspective. Thanks to the richness of the Norwegian administrative data, this thesis uncovers different novel findings.
The first essay aims at understanding how much the local labor market conditions affect the transmission of earnings between generations. By studying the boom of the Norwegian oil sector in the early 70s, the authors relate the change in returns to education and in earnings distribution, which followed this event, to the changes in intergenerational mobility in the affected areas. A drop in returns to academic education and a reduction in the dispersion in earnings lead to a significant increase in intergenerational mobility.
The second essay focuses on the school system and on the effects of merit based school allocation. Exploiting a reform taking place in Bergen, they show that merit based systems increase the proportion of good students who attend the schools with the best reputation. However, there is no effect on the outcome of these students in terms of increased grades or better enrollment in universities, suggesting that reforms improving school quality for the best students are usually not effective in improving their outcomes.
The third essay shows the consequences of finding a job through the informal social network, as compared to using different channels. I show that displaced workers spend less time in unemployment if they can benefit of the help of social contacts. However, in the long term the jobs found through these informal channels provide worse outcomes, in terms of earnings 7 years after the displacement. Dalla-Zuanna argues that the reason is that workers tradeoff between jobs found faster (through the help of social connections) and jobs where they are better matched, but which take longer to be found.
Defense:
12:15 in Karl Borch Aud., NHH
Members of the evaluation committee:
Professor Katrine Vellesen Løken (leader of the committee), Department of Economics, NHH
Senior Economist Bhash Mazumder, Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago
Professor Mikael Lindahl, University of Gothenburg
Supervisors:
Professor Kjell Gunnar Salvanes (main supervisor), Department of Economics, NHH
Associate Professor Aline Bütikofer, Department of Economics, NHH
Dr. Kai Liu, University of Cambridge
The trial lecture and thesis defence will be open to the public. Copies of the thesis will be available from presse@nhh.no.