Essays in the economics of education and microeconometrics

This thesis employs microeconometric methods to understand determinants and eects of individual behavior relating to educational choice and consumer demand. Chapter 2 studies the intergenerational eects of maternal education on a range of children's outcomes, including cognitive achievement and behavioral problems. Endogeneity of maternal schooling is addressed by instrumenting with schooling costs during the mother's adolescence. The results show substantial intergenerational returns to education. The chapter studies an array of potential channels which may transmit the eect to the child, including family environment and parental investments. The following chapter 3 investigates the eect of studying abroad on international labor market mobility later in life for university graduates. As source of identifying variation, this work exploits the introduction and expansion of the European ERASMUS student exchange program. Studying abroad signicantly increases the probability of working abroad, and the chapter provides evidence on the underlying mechanisms. Chapter 4 compares labor market outcomes between rm-based apprenticeships and full-time vocational schooling alternatives, exploiting the idea that variation in apprenticeship availability aects the opportunities individuals have when they grow up. The chapter documents how variation in vacancies for apprenticeships aects educational choice. The results show that apprenticeship training leads to lower unemployment rates at ages 23 to 26, but there are no signicant dierences in wages. Chapter 5 develops a new approach to the measurement of price responsiveness of gasoline demand and deadweight loss estimation. It uses shape restrictions derived from economic theory to match a desire for exibility with the need for structure in the welfare analysis of consumer behavior. Using travel survey data, the chapter shows that these restrictions remove the erratic behavior of standard nonparametric approaches. Investigating price responsiveness across the income distribution, the middle income group is found to be the most responsive

Nonparametric Estimation of a Nonseparable Demand Function under the Slutsky Inequality Restriction

We present a method for consistent nonparametric estimation of a demand function with nonseparable unobserved taste heterogeneity subject to the shape restriction implied by the Slutsky inequality. We use the method to estimate gasoline demand in the United States. The results reveal differences in behavior between heavy and moderate gasoline users. They also reveal variation in the responsiveness of demand to plausible changes in prices across the income distribution. We extend our estimation method to permit endogeneity of prices. The empirical results illustrate the improvements in finite-sample performance of a nonparametric estimator from imposing shape restrictions based on economic theory

Non-stationary extreme models and a climatic application

In this paper, we study extreme values of non-stationary climatic phenomena. In the usually considered stationary case, the modelling of extremes is only based on the behaviour of the tails of the distribution of the remainder of the data set. In the non-stationary case though, it seems reasonable to assume that the temporal dynamics of the entire data set and that of extremes are closely related and thus all the available information about this link should be used in statistical studies of these events. We try to study how centered and normalized data which are closer to stationary data than the observation allows easier statistical analysis and to understand if we are very far from a hypothesis stating that the extreme events of centered and normed data follow a stationary distribution. The location and scale parameters used for this transformation (the central field), as well as extreme parameters obtained for the transformed data enable us to retrieve the trends in extreme events of the initial data set. Through non-parametric statistical methods, we thus compare a model directly built on the extreme events and a model reconstructed from estimations of the trends of the location and scale parameters of the entire data set and stationary extremes obtained from the centered and normed data set. In case of a correct reconstruction, we can clearly state that variations of the characteristics of extremes are well explained by the central field. Through these analyses we bring arguments to choose constant shape parameters of extreme distributions. We show that for the frequency of the moments of high threshold excesses (or for the mean of annual extremes), the general dynamics explains a large part of the trends on frequency of extreme events. The conclusion is less obvious for the amplitudes of threshold exceedances (or the variance of annual extremes) – especially for cold temperatures, partly justified by the statistical tools used, which require further analyses on the variability definition

Structure of a Complete ATP Synthase Dimer Reveals the Molecular Basis of Inner Mitochondrial Membrane Morphology

We determined the structure of a complete, dimeric F1Fo-ATP synthase from yeast Yarrowia lipolytica mitochondria by a combination of cryo-EM and X-ray crystallography. The final structure resolves 58 of the 60 dimer subunits. Horizontal helices of subunit a in Fo wrap around the c-ring rotor, and a total of six vertical helices assigned to subunits a, b, f, i, and 8 span the membrane. Subunit 8 (A6L in human) is an evolutionary derivative of the bacterial b subunit. On the lumenal membrane surface, subunit f establishes direct contact between the two monomers. Comparison with a cryo-EM map of the F1Fo monomer identifies subunits e and g at the lateral dimer interface. They do not form dimer contacts but enable dimer formation by inducing a strong membrane curvature of ∼100°. Our structure explains the structural basis of cristae formation in mitochondria, a landmark signature of eukaryotic cell morphology

The Selection of High-Skilled Emigrants

We measure selection among high-skilled emigrants from Germany using predicted earnings. Migrants to less equal countries are positively selected relative to nonmigrants, while migrants to more equal countries are negatively selected, consistent with the prediction in Borjas (1987). Positive selection to less equal countries reflects university quality and grades, and negative selection to more equal countries reflects university subject and gender. Migrants to the United States are highly positively selected and concentrated in STEM fields. Our results highlight the relevance of the Borjas model for high-skilled individuals when credit constraints and other migration barriers are unlikely to be binding

Creating a proof-of-concept climate service to assess future renewable energy mixes in Europe: an overview of the C3S ECEM project

The EU Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S) European Climatic Energy Mixes (ECEM) has produced, in close collaboration with prospective users, a proof-of-concept climate service, or Demonstrator, designed to enable the energy industry and policy makers assess how well different energy supply mixes in Europe will meet demand, over different time horizons (from seasonal to long-term decadal planning), focusing on the role climate has on the mixes. The concept of C3S ECEM, its methodology and some results are presented here. The first part focuses on the construction of reference data sets for climate variables based on the ERA-Interim reanalysis. Subsequently, energy variables were created by transforming the bias-adjusted climate variables using a combination of statistical and physically-based models. A comprehensive set of measured energy supply and demand data was also collected, in order to assess the robustness of the conversion to energy variables. Climate and energy data have been produced both for the historical period (1979–2016) and for future projections (from 1981 to 2100, to also include a past reference period, but focusing on the 30 year period 2035–2065). The skill of current seasonal forecast systems for climate and energy variables has also been assessed. The C3S ECEM project was designed to provide ample opportunities for stakeholders to convey their needs and expectations, and assist in the development of a suitable Demonstrator. This is the tool that collects the output produced by C3S ECEM and presents it in a user-friendly and interactive format, and it therefore constitutes the essence of the C3S ECEM proof-of-concept climate service

The bowfin genome illuminates the developmental evolution of ray-finned fishes.

The bowfin (Amia calva) is a ray-finned fish that possesses a unique suite of ancestral and derived phenotypes, which are key to understanding vertebrate evolution. The phylogenetic position of bowfin as a representative of neopterygian fishes, its archetypical body plan and its unduplicated and slowly evolving genome make bowfin a central species for the genomic exploration of ray-finned fishes. Here we present a chromosome-level genome assembly for bowfin that enables gene-order analyses, settling long-debated neopterygian phylogenetic relationships. We examine chromatin accessibility and gene expression through bowfin development to investigate the evolution of immune, scale, respiratory and fin skeletal systems and identify hundreds of gene-regulatory loci conserved across vertebrates. These resources connect developmental evolution among bony fishes, further highlighting the bowfin's importance for illuminating vertebrate biology and diversity in the genomic era

The brittle star genome illuminates the genetic basis of animal appendage regeneration

Species within nearly all extant animal lineages are capable of regenerating body parts. However, it remains unclear whether the gene expression programme controlling regeneration is evolutionarily conserved. Brittle stars are a species-rich class of echinoderms with outstanding regenerative abilities, but investigations into the genetic bases of regeneration in this group have been hindered by the limited genomic resources. Here, we report a chromosome-scale genome assembly for the brittle starAmphiura filiformis.We show that the brittle star genome is the most rearranged amongst echinoderms sequenced to date, featuring a reorganised Hox cluster reminiscent of the rearrangements observed in sea urchins. In addition, we performed an extensive profiling of gene expression during brittle star adult arm regeneration and identified sequential waves of gene expression governing wound healing, proliferation and differentiation. We conducted comparative transcriptomic analyses with other invertebrate and vertebrate models for appendage regeneration and uncovered hundreds of genes with conserved expression dynamics, particularly during the proliferative phase of regeneration. Our findings emphasise the crucial importance of echinoderms to detect long-range expression conservation between vertebrates and classical invertebrate regeneration model systems.Cold Spring Harbor Laborator

Changes in northern hemisphere temperature variability shaped by regional warming patterns

Global warming involves changes not only in the mean atmospheric temperature, but also in its variability and extremes. Here we use a feature-tracking technique to investigate the dynamical contribution to temperature anomalies in the northern hemisphere in CMIP5 climate-change simulations. We develop a simple theory to explain how temperature variance and skewness changes are generated dynamically from mean temperature gradient changes, and demonstrate the crucial role of regional warming patterns in shaping the distinct response of cold and warm anomalies. We also show that skewness changes must be taken into account, in addition to variance changes, in order to correctly capture the projected temperature variability response. These changes in variability may impact humans, agriculture and animals, as they experience not only a warmer mean climate, but also a new likelihood of temperature anomalies within that climate