Risky Business – The Role of Individual Risk Attitudes in Occupational Choice

This study analyzes the relationship of individual risk attitudes and occupational sorting with respect to occupational earnings risk. By using the German Mikrozensus, a precise measure for earnings risk is computed as the occupation-wide standard deviation of wages. Following the procedure proposed by Bonin (2007), this earnings risk measure is used as dependent variable in cross-sectional and panel data estimations using the SOEP data of 2004 and 2006, including a measure of the individual willingness to take risks. The significant relationship in cross-sectional analyses vanishes when controlling for unobserved heterogeneity. Cross-sectional results seem to be driven by the correlation of unobserved ability and willingness to take risks, and are potentially biased by an attenuation bias due to unstable risk preferences. This study contributes to the existing literature by showing the importance of controlling for unobserved heterogeneity and instability of attitudes when examing the effects of personality traits in labor market decisions.Risk attitudes; occupational sorting; earnings risk; mundlak transformation

Long-term atmospheric circulation variability in the tropics linked to climate changes in the Amazon and Congo

Presently, there has not been an attempt to holistically understand regional manifestations of tropical atmospheric circulation systems or how long-term changes in these systems have influenced the climate in the Amazon or the Congo. This study provides insight into long-term (1900–2010) changes in the Hadley Circulation and Walker Circulation with a focus on connecting these tropical circulation changes to regional and seasonal climate change in the Amazon and Congo tropical forests. Based on the results of this study, it can be concluded that the Hadley Circulation has distinct regional manifestations and has not changed uniformly across different regions. Globally, the Hadley Circulation has strengthened in the Southern Hemisphere and weakened in the Northern Hemisphere for the 1900–2010 time period. However, the Hadley Circulation over the Amazon indicates strengthening in both hemispheres and weakening in both hemispheres over the Congo. A strengthening of the Walker Circulation has also been identified in the Pacific and Atlantic Ocean and over the Maritime Continent. However, long-term changes of the Walker Circulation over the Atlantic are indicative to Atlantic Niño (Atlantic counterpart of the El Niño) conditions, as represented in substantial reversals of climatological zonal wind patterns. These wind reversals indicate less moisture influx into the Amazon from the Atlantic Ocean and more moisture influx into the Congo from the Atlantic although long-term precipitation trends indicate more drying in the Congo than the Amazon. This study provides valuable insight into how interactions between oceans and atmospheric circulation systems influence regional climate in the Amazon and Congo as well as large-scale changes in the full tropical belt. These findings will help to improve climate projections in the tropics by providing an essential foundation of seasonal and regional manifestations of tropical atmospheric circulation systems and how long-term changes in these systems have influenced climate in the Amazon and the Congo forests.Geological Science

Mitigating the Effects of Climate Change with Wind Energy and GIS

The climate is changing, and humans are heavily exacerbating these changes. As the effects of climate change are being felt across the planet, scientists and policy makers are uniting to increase mitigation efforts and are researching renewable, clean energy sources to reduce the amount of greenhouse gas emissions released into the atmosphere during energy production. Of the different renewable energy technologies, wind energy is one of the most researched and implemented. Over the past twenty years, researchers have been applying Geographic Information Systems (GIS) to their climate change studies. GIS allows the user to spatially view, manipulate, and analyze data to determine patterns, trends, and relationships. This paper examines the use of GIS as a tool in wind power studies to locate potential wind farm sites, model wind farm energy output, and assess the potential for implementing wind energy

Achievement rank affects performance and major choices in college

In this paper we study how a student's ordinal rank in a peer group affects performance and specialisation choices in university. By exploiting data with repeated random assignment of students to teaching sections, we find that a higher rank increases performance and the probability of choosing related follow-up courses and majors. We document two types of dynamic effect. First, earlier ranks are less important than later ranks. Second, responses to rank changes are asymmetric: improvements in rank raise performance, while decreases in rank have no effect. Rank effects partially operate through students’ expectations about future grades

Does re-opening schools contribute to the spread of SARS-CoV-2?:Evidence from staggered summer breaks in Germany

This paper studies the effect of the end of school summer breaks on SARS-CoV-2 cases in Germany. The staggered timing of summer breaks across federal states allows us to implement an event study design. We base our analysis on official daily counts of confirmed coronavirus infections by age groups across all 401 German counties. We consider an event window of two weeks before and four weeks after the end of summer breaks. We do not find evidence of a positive effect of school re-openings on case numbers. For individuals aged between 5 and 59 years, comprising school-aged children and their parents, our pre- ferred specification indicates that the end of summer breaks had a negative but insignificant effect on the number of new confirmed cases. Our results are not explained by changes in mobility patterns around school re-openings arising from travel returnees. Analyses of Google Trends data suggest that behavioral changes of parents may have contributed to contain larger outbreaks after school re-openings. We conclude that school re-openings in Germany under strict hygiene measures combined with quarantine and containment measures have not increased the number of newly confirmed SARS-CoV-2 infections

What happened when parents lost their jobs during lockdown?

Many parents had to cope with losing their jobs or part of their income at the same time as they were forced to home school. How did this affect their children’s learning and their mental health? Claudia Hupkau (CEP/ LSE), Ingo Isphording (IZA), Stephen Machin (CEP/ LSE) and Jenifer Ruiz-Valenzuela (CEP/ LSE) share their findings and warn these rising inequalities should be borne in mind as the government considers school closures again

Labour market shocks and parental investments during the Covid-19 pandemic

This paper studies spill-over effects of parental labour market shocks at two time points in the Covid-19 crisis: right after its onset in April 2020, and in January 2021. We use rich data from the UK to look at the consequences of immediate and persistent shocks that hit parents’ economic livelihoods. These negative labour market shocks have substantially larger impacts when suffered by fathers than by mothers. Children of fathers that suffered the most severe shocks - earnings dropping to zero - are the ones that are consistently impacted. In April 2020, they were 10 percentage points less likely to have received additional paid learning resources, but their fathers were spending about 30 more minutes per day helping them with school work. However, by January 2021, this latter association switches sign, as the negative spill-over onto children’s education occurred for those fathers facing more persistent, negative labour market shocks as the crisis progressed. The paper discusses potential mechanisms driving these results, finding a sustained deterioration of household finances and a worsening of father’s mental health to be factors at play

Linguistic barriers in the destination language acquisition of immigrants

There are various degrees of similarity between the languages of different immigrants and the language of their destination country. This linguistic distance is an obstacle to the acquisition of a language, which leads to large differences in the attainments of the language skills necessary for economic and social integration in the destination country. This study aims at quantifying the influence of linguistic distance on the language acquisition of immigrants in the US and in Germany. Drawing from comparative linguistics, we derive a measure of linguistic distance based on the automatic comparison of pronunciations. We compare this measure with three other linguistic and non-linguistic approaches in explaining self-reported measures of language skills. We show that there is a strong initial disadvantage from the linguistic origin for language acquisition, while the effect on the steepness of assimilation patterns is ambiguous in Germany and the US