The Covid-19 pandemic has accelerated trends in automation as many employers seek to save on labor costs amid widespread illness, increased worker leverage, and market pressures to onshore supply chains. While existing research has explored how automation may displace nonspecialized jobs, there...

This paper investigates the role played by self-confidence in college applications. Using incentivized experiments, we measure the self-confidence of more than 2,000 students applying to colleges in France. The best female students and students from low socioeconomic status (low-SES)...

This paper examines the effects of mineral extraction on human capital formation in Colombia, a country rich in natural resources but struggling with low college attendance, high youth unemployment, and high informality in the labor market. Leveraging the allocation of natural resources as a...

Katharina Wedel prepared this study while she was working at the Center for the Economics of Education at the ifo Institute. The study was completed in September 2023 and accepted as doctoral thesis by the Department of Economics at LMU Munich. It consists of four distinct empirical essays that...

Concerns about widening inequality have increased attention on the topic of equality of opportunities and intergenerational mobility. We use data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth to analyse how educational and income mobility has evolved in the United States of America. We show...

Este trabajo estudia el efecto de la escolaridad sobre los aprendizajes en América Latina según el nivel de integración socioeconómica de los alumnos. Utilizando datos de las distintas ediciones de PISA para 5 países de la región (Argentina, Brasil, Chile, Costa Rica y Uruguay), el trabajo...

Diversity in gender identity and sexual orientation challenges traditional institutions, social norms, and gendered stereotypes. This may translate into greater levels of conflict in s ociety. Using data from 95 middle and high schools in Uruguay, we exploit plausibly exogenous variation in the...

Este trabajo estudia el efecto de los programas de transferencias monetarias condicionadas sobre la concentración de alumnos de menor nivel socioeconómico en determinados tipos de escuelas. Utilizando datos de un municipio urbano en el estado de México, el trabajo evalúa si el programa...

Este trabajo proporciona un modelo dinámico de segregación escolar socioeconómica. Reinterpreta y extiende el modelo Galor-Zeira para ilustrar las principales causas y consecuencias de este fenómeno. El modelo teórico predice que la segregación de los pobres será mayor cuanto mayor sea la...

Talented individuals are seen as drivers of long-term growth, but how do they realize their full potential? In this paper, I show that even in a group of high-IQ men and women, lifetime earnings are substantially influenced by their education and personality traits. I identify a previously...