Why sisters are better than brothers : the effect of sibling gender on attitudes and other essays in gender and education economics

Defence date: 24 February 2022Examining Board : Prof. Michèle Belot (Cornell University); Prof. Andrea Ichino (EUI); Prof. Almudena Sevilla (UCL); Prof. Arnaud Chevalier (Royal Holloway University of London)This thesis is composed of three independent essays in applied microeconomics. The first contributes to the field of gender and family economics and analyzes the effect of the gender of the second-born sibling on first-born individuals’ attitudes. The second chapter speaks to the health economics literature, evaluating the unitended consequences of a liberalization of the morning after pill. The topic of the final chapter lies within the economics of education, proposing a way to differentiate between degrees depending on the type of higher education institution. Even though the three chapters seem separate, all of them share my interest in gender and education economics, as well as causal estimation. In Chapter 1, joint with Martin Habets, we analyze the causal effect of sibling gender on attitudes and preferences. Comparing first-born women with a next-born sister to first-born women with a next-born brother allows us to estimate the causal effect of sibling gender. In particular, we find that a next-born sister leads first-born women to have less stereotypically female preferences in education. We also explore how the gender of the next-born sibling influences parental involvement. Our findings indicate that parents are more involved in the education of their first-born daughter if their next-born sibling is also a girl. These results shed light on how sibling gender influences preferences and attitudes, specifically those for education choices that are gender role conforming. To further explore the role of sibling gender in shaping attitudes, we have designed an online survey – currently in progress – to measure gender roles more precisely. In Capter 2, I analyze the causal effects of liberalizing access to emergency hormonal contraception (EHC), also known as the morning after pill, on young adults’ reproductive behavior in England. The liberalization, which changed the prescription status from “on doctor’s prescription only” to “available without prescription in pharmacies", created easier and more timely access to EHC for all women aged 16 years or older. In a theoretical model of individual behavior I find that EHC, which can be seen as i insurance against pregnancies, acts both as a substitute for regular contraception, as well as a substitute for abortions. This creates the need for analyzing the issue empirically since overall effects on outcomes such as births and abortions are unclear. Using a difference-in-differences approach, I find that easier access to EHC increases births only among 20-24 year olds. I find no effects on abortions or sexually transmitted infections. Chapter 3, attempts to differentiate the degree attainment in the UK by type of higher education institutions. Historically higher education in the UK has been shaped by a dual system: elite universities on the one hand and polytechnics and other higher education institutions on the other. Despite the formal equivalence of both degrees, the two institution types faced different financing, target populations, admission procedures and subjects taught. Nevertheless, in survey data they are often indistinguishable. We overcome this problem using a multiple imputation technique in the UKHLS and BHPS data sets. We examine the validity of inference based on imputed values using Monte Carlo simulations. We also verify that the imputed values are consistent with university graduation rates computed using the universe of undergraduate students in the UK.-- 1 Why Sisters are Better than Brothers - The Effect of Sibling Gender on Attitudes -- 1.1 Introduction -- 1.2 Literature -- 1.2.1 Review of the mechanisms behind sibling gender effects -- 1.3 Identification and Estimation Strategy -- 1.4 Data and Sampl -- 1.4.1 Next Steps Data -- 1.4.2 British Cohort Study -- 1.5 Results -- 1.5.1 Results from the Next Steps Data -- 1.5.2 Results British Cohort Study -- 1.6 Survey -- 1.6.1 Survey Questions -- 1.6.2 Survey Regression Specification -- 1.6.3 Survey Index Construction and Technical Details -- 1.7 Conclusion and Outlook -- References -- Appendix 1.A Appendix -- 1.A.1 Summary Statistics -- 1.A.2 Balance Tests -- 1.A.3 Results Next Steps Data -- 1.A.4 Results British Cohort Study -- 2 Liberalizing the Morning After Pill - Effects on Young Women -- 2.1 Introduction -- 2.2 Literature Review -- 2.3 Emergency Hormonal Contraception -- 2.4 The Model -- 2.4.1 Solution of the Model -- 2.4.2 Comparative Statics: The Reform -- 2.5 Data -- 2.6 Empirical Strategy -- 2.7 First Stage -- 2.8 Estimation Results -- 2.8.1 Randomization Inference -- 2.9 Robustness Checks --2.9.1 Common Trends: Leads in Main Regression -- 2.9.2 Serial Correlation -- 2.10 Conclusion -- References -- 3 Multiple Imputation of University Degree Attainment -- 3.1 Introduction -- 3.2 Institutional background -- 3.3 Data -- 3.3.1 Degree attainment in the BHPS and the UKHLS -- 3.4 Multiple imputation -- 3.4.1 Missing data mechanism -- 3.4.2 Imputation model -- 3.4.3 Evaluation -- 3.5 Results and discussion -- 3.6 Conclusion -- Reference

Job creation over the business cycle and the theory of poaching explored for the case of Austria

This thesis uses Austrian social insurance data from 2000 to 2014 to analyze how job creation evolves over the business cycle. For this analysis, firms are split into quintiles according to the median monthly wage earnings of all of their employees, such that one can examine how high paying firms react to a change in the unemployment rate in comparison to low paying firms. For this purpose the net job creation rate or employment growth rate is decomposed into a hire and a separation rate, which are further split into hires from employment and hires from non-employment, likewise for the separations. This makes it possible to examine if high paying firms display stronger pro-cyclical growth, as suggested by the theory of poaching by Moscarini and Postel-Vinay (2012). Yet, results in favor of the wage ladder model cannot be found in general, only for specific samples of the dataset and when particular measures of the business cycle such as the twelve month differences in regional unemployment rates are used, is there evidence in favor of poaching. The novelty of this thesis is the monthly dataset used, which allows to more accurately distinguish between separations to employment and separations to from non-employment, likewise for hires from employment and non-employment, hence making a more detailed analysis of the theory of poaching possible.6