Why Are Single-Sex Schools Successful?

We exploit two unusual policy features of academic high schools in Seoul, South Korea—random assignment of pupils to high schools within districts and conversion of some existing single-sex schools to the coeducational (coed) type over time—to identify three distinct causal parameters: the between-school effect of attending a coed (versus a single-sex) school; the within-school effect of school-type conversion, conditional on (unobserved) school characteristics; and the effect of class-level exposure to mixed-gender (versus same-sex) peers. We find robust evidence that pupils in single-sex schools outperform their counterparts in coed schools, which could be due to single-sex peers in school and classroom, or unobservable school-level covariates. Focusing on switching schools, we find that the conversion of the pupil gender type from single-sex to coed leads to worse academic outcomes for both boys and girls, conditional on school fixed effects and time-varying observables. While for boys, the negative effect is largely driven by exposure to mixed-gender peers at school-level, it is class-level exposure to mixed-gender peers that explains this disadvantage for girls

Referral-based Job Search Networks

This article derives novel testable implications of referral-based job search networks in which employees provide employers with information about potential new hires that they otherwise would not have. Using comprehensive matched employer–employee data covering the entire workforce in one large metropolitan labour market combined with unique survey data linked to administrative records, we provide evidence that workers earn higher wages and are less inclined to leave their firms if they have obtained their job through a referral. These effects are particularly strong at the beginning of the employment relationship and decline with tenure in the firm, suggesting that firms and workers learn about workers' productivity over time. Overall, our findings imply that job search networks help to reduce informational deficiencies in the labour market and lead to productivity gains for workers and firms

Migration outflows and optimal migration policy: rules versus discretion

We study the effects of more open borders on return migration and show that migrants are more likely to return to the origin country when migration rules are softened, because this implies that they could more easily re-migrate if return migration is unsuccessful. As a result, softening migration rules leads to lower net inflows than is generally acknowledged. We show that if government follows rules to shape the optimal migration policy, it will choose more open “borders” than were its behaviour to be discretionary. However, this requires an appropriate commitment technology. We show that electoral accountability may be a solution to the commitment problem. As a matter of fact, observed softer immigration rules in western countries suggest the effectiveness of such a mechanism.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

When does hate hurt the most? Generational differences in the association between ethnic and racial harassment, ethnic attachment, and mental health

Using data from Understanding Society, this paper provides a comprehensive account of the associations between ethnic and racial harassment (ERH), mental health and ethnic attachment for ethnic minorities living in England. We find an association between ERH and poor mental health measured using GHQ for ethnic minorities, even after controlling for a rich array of individual and area level characteristics. We find that ethnic attachment, measured as ethnic identity and co-ethnic friendship ties, moderates this association but solely for UK born ethnic minorities. In contrast to previous research, we further find that living in areas of high co-ethnic concentration appears to exacerbate the association between ERH and mental ill-health