Three essays in labour economics and the economics of education

This thesis consists of three empirical essays. The first chapter is focused on the economics of gender, and the other two chapters are focused on the economics of education. A common theme in all these three chapters is studying the outcomes of disadvantaged groups in society, with an eye to policy interventions that could improve these outcomes. The first chapter examines whether women face a glass ceiling in the labour market, which would imply that they are under-represented in high wage regions of the wage distribution. I also measure the extent to which the glass ceiling comes about because women are segregated into lower-paying firms (glass doors), or because they are segregated into lower-paying jobs within firms (within-firm glass ceilings). I find clear evidence that women experience a glass ceiling that is driven mainly by their disproportionate sorting across firm types rather than sorting across jobs within firms. I find no evidence that gender differences in sorting across firms can be accounted for by compensating differentials. However, my results are consistent with predictions of an efficiency wage model where high-paying firms discriminate against females. The second chapter estimates the effect of publicly-disseminated information about school achievement on school choice decisions. We find that students are more likely to leave their school when public information reveals poor school-level performance. Some parents’ respond to information soon after it becomes available. Others, including non-English-speaking parents, alter their school choice decisions only in response to information that has been disseminated widely and discussed in the media. Parents in low-income neighbourhoods are most likely to alter their school choice decisions in response to new information. The third chapter measures the extent to which cross-sectional differences in schools’ average achievement on standardized tests are due to transitory factors. Test-based measures of school performance are increasingly used to shape education policy, and recent evidence shows that they also affect families’ school choice decisions. There are, however, concerns about the precision of these measures. My results suggest that sampling variation and one-time mean reverting shocks are a significant source of cross-sectional variation in schools’ mean test scores

General versus Spinal Anesthesia: Comparison of Complications and Outcomes in Lumbar Laminectomy Surgery

Background: This study was designed to compare the complications and outcomes of lumbar laminectomy surgery performed by general and spinal anesthesia. Methods: In this prospective study, 110 patients with two common degenerative spinal diseases (lumbar discopathy and spinal canal stenosis) were enrolled. All the patients were operated in Bahonar hospital, Kerman City, Iran, via either spinal or general anesthesia by a unique surgeon. Intraoperative and postoperative complications and outcomes were compared between the two groups using descriptive and analytic statistics methods. Results: Surgeon satisfaction of anesthesia, blood loss, and admission time were not statistically significant between the groups. But, postoperative pain at recovery room, and 1, 2, and 12 hours after the operation was significantly higher in general anesthesia compared to lumbar anesthesia. Morphine request was also significantly higher with general anesthesia (P < 0.001). Conclusion: This study demonstrates that general anesthesia has greater pain in comparison with spinal anesthesia that should be considered in degenerative spinal diseases surgeries. Keywords Laminectomy; Lumbar region; surgery; General anesthesia; Spinal anesthesi

Who Said or What Said? Estimating Ideological Bias in Views Among Economists

There exists a long-standing debate about the influence of ideology in economics. Surprisingly, however, there is no concrete empirical evidence to examine this critical issue. Using an online randomized controlled experiment involving economists in 19 countries, we examine the effect of ideological bias on views among economists. Participants were asked to evaluate statements from prominent economists on different topics, while source attribution for each statement was randomized without participants’ knowledge. For each statement, participants either received a mainstream source, an ideologically different less-/non-mainstream source, or no source. We find that changing source attributions from mainstream to less-/non-mainstream, or removing them, significantly reduces economists’ reported agreement with statements. Using a model of Bayesian updating we examine two competing hypotheses as potential explanations for these results: unbiased Bayesian updating versus ideologically-biased Bayesian updating. While we find no evidence in support of unbiased updating, our results are consistent with biased Bayesian updating. More specifically, we find that changing/removing sources (1) has no impact on economists’ reported confidence with their evaluations; (2) similarly affects experts/non-experts in relevant areas; and (3) affects those at the far right of the political spectrum much more significantly than those at the far left. Finally, we find significant heterogeneity in our results by gender, country, PhD completion country, research area, and undergraduate major, with patterns consistent with the existence of ideological bias