Natural Resources, Demand for Skills, and Schooling Choices

This paper studies the consequences of the buildup of a new economic sector—the Norwegian petroleum industry—on investment in human capital. We assess both short-term and long-term effects for a broad set of educational margins, by comparing individuals in regions exposed to the new sector with individuals in unexposed regions. Importantly, we analyze how the effects and the mechanisms change as the sector develops. Our results indicate that an initial increase in the high school dropout rate is short-lived both because dropouts get their degrees later as adults, and because later-born cohorts adapt to the new needs of the industry by enrolling more in vocational secondary education. We also observe a decrease in academic high school and college enrollment except for engineering degrees. Financial incentives to both completing high school and field of study, are the most likely channels driving these effects

Breaking the Links: Natural Resource Booms and Intergenerational Mobility

Do large economic shocks increase intergenerational earnings mobility through creating new economic opportunities? Alternatively, do they reduce mobility by reinforcing the links between generations? In this paper, we estimate how the Norwegian oil boom starting in the 1970s affected intergenerational mobility. We find that this resource shock increased intergenerational mobility for cohorts entering the labor market at the beginning of the oil boom in those labor markets most affected by the growing oil industry. In particular, we show that individuals born to poor families in oil-affected regions were more likely to move to the top of their cohort's earnings distribution. Importantly, we reveal that preexisting local differences in intergenerational mobility did not drive these findings. Instead, we show that changes in the returns to education offer the best explanation for geographic differences in intergenerational mobility following the oil boom. In addition, we find that intergenerational mobility was significantly higher in oil-affected labor markets across three generations and that the oil boom broke the earnings link between grandfathers and their grandsons