A socio-economic analysis of youth disconnectedness

According to our research, some 12% of young people in Germany between the ages of 17 and 19 are disconnected, i.e. not in school, unemployed, and not living with a partner. The percentage of disconnected youths has been on the rise since 2002. There is evidence that an adverse family environment is the most important variable for being disconnected. Early life adversity influences the development of cognitive and noncognitive skills as well as school and labour market outcomes. Macroeconomic factors also contribute to disconnectedness. Recessions are followed by an increase in the number of disconnected youth. --Disconnected youth,unemployment,school failure,life adversity

A Socio-Economic Analysis of Youth Disconnectedness

Disconnectedness among youth can have several dimensions. From a socio-economic viewpoint, failure in school, unemployment and the lack of an intimate relationship are among the most important ones. In our samples from SOEP youth questionnaires, approximately 13% of young people in Germany between the ages of 17 and 19 are disconnected. The percentage of disconnected youths has been on the rise since 2001. There is evidence that an adverse family background is the most important variable for being disconnected in young adulthood. Macroeconomic factors also contribute to disconnectedness. Recessions are followed by increases in the number of disconnected youth.Disconnected youth, unemployment, school failure, life adversity

A Socio-economic Analysis of Youth Disconnectedness

Disconnectedness among youth can have several dimensions. From a socio-economic viewpoint, failure in school, unemployment and the lack of an intimate relationship are among the most important ones. In our samples from SOEP youth questionnaires, approximately 13% of young people in Germany between the ages of 17 and 19 are disconnected. The percentage of disconnected youths has been on the rise since 2001. There is evidence that an adverse family background is the most important variable for being disconnected in young adulthood. Macroeconomic factors also contribute to disconnectedness. Recessions are followed by increases in the number of disconnected youth.disconnected youth, unemployment, school failure, life adversity

A socio-economic analysis of youth disconnectedness

According to our research, some 12% of young people in Germany between the ages of 17 and 19 are disconnected, i.e. not in school, unemployed, and not living with a partner. The percentage of disconnected youths has been on the rise since 2002. There is evidence that an adverse family environment is the most important variable for being disconnected. Early life adversity influences the development of cognitive and noncognitive skills as well as school and labour market outcomes. Macroeconomic factors also contribute to disconnectedness. Recessions are followed by an increase in the number of disconnected youth

Three Essays on Semiparametric Econometric Evaluation : Methods and Applications

This dissertation consists of three stand-alone research papers on the semiparametric estimation of treatment effects. Treatment effects refer to the causal effect of a variable on an outcome variable of interest and the semiparametric estimation avoids the parametric assumptions on the outcome equation. The thesis is organized as follows: In the first chapter we analyze the effect of individual characteristics on the test score gaps between different Eastern European countries and Finland. Additionally, we look at the test score gaps between Eastern European counties. The second chapter analyzes the gender test score gap in a within country study for Turkey. In this chapter we evaluate the effect of individual characteristics, family characteristics and school characteristics on the gender test score gap. The third chapter deals with inverse propensity score weighting estimators and double robust estimators. In this chapter a new estimation procedure is developed, which allows to estimate the treatment effects with a lower mean squared error

Disconnected Young Adults in Germany: Initial Evidence

Disconnectedness among young adults can have several dimensions. From a socioeconomic viewpoint, failure in school, unemployment and the lack of a partner are among the most important ones. In our sample of respondents to the SOEP Youth Questionnaire, approximately 13% of young people had been socio-economically disconnected at least once between the ages of 17 and 19. The percentage of disconnected young adults also rose from 2001 to 2008. We found evidence that an adverse family background is the most important variable affecting disconnection in young adulthood. Macroeconomic factors also contribute to socio-economic disconnection. Recessions are followed by increases in the share of disconnected young adults

How Far is the East? : Educational Performance in Eastern Europe

When the Soviet Union collapsed a transition process started in Eastern Europe. This included a number of reforms to adapt the educational system to the new requirements of the job market. To assess the educational systems in Eastern Europe, this paper takes a look at the gap in PISA test scores between different countries. Using PISA 2006 data we disentangle the effects that explain the gap between Finland, the best performing country, and seven Eastern European countries, as well as, between Eastern European countries. The methodology applied in this paper is a semiparametric version of the threefold Blinder-Oaxaca decomposition, an approach which is not yet used in the research regarding the differences in school outcomes. Our results show that in all cases the differences in characteristics does not explain much of the gap. The return effect is the driving force of the differences in test scores. Under our identifying assumption, our results therefore indicate that the PISA test score gap can mainly be attributed to the different efficiency of school systems and are not due to better characteristics of students in a particular country. Furthermore, we provide evidence that the gap is smaller for better students indicating that, especially for poor performing students, the efficiency of Eastern European schools is behind the efficiency of Finnish schools

Semiparametric Decomposition of the Gender Achievement Gap : An Application for Turkey

Using the data from the 2006 Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), this study sheds light on the gender gap in mathematics and science achievement of 15-year-olds in Turkey. We apply a semiparametric Oaxaca-Blinder (OB) decomposition to investigate the gap. This technique relaxes the parametric assumptions of the standard OB decomposition, accounts for the possible violation of the common support assumption and allows us to explore the gender test score gap not only at the mean but also across the entire distribution of test scores. Our findings provide evidence that the failure to recognize the common support problem leads to the underestimation of the part of the gap attributable to observable characteristics. We find that girls outperform boys in science while the gap is not statistically significant in math. School characteristics are the most important observable characteristics in explaining the gap. We also find that the gender test score gap changes across the distribution

Analyzing spillover effects of the gamestop squeeze on short interest

Using short selling data collected by FINRA, we investigate spillover effects of the GME short squeeze at the beginning of 2021 on other stocks’ short interest. Using a broad sample of stocks, we found substantial spillover effects leading to an overall reduction in short interest across US stocks. Stocks with a high pre-event short interest experienced a significant reduction in the short interest, whereas those stocks with a low pre-event short interest experienced a slight increase in the short interest. By decomposing the change in the short interest into a quantity and price effect, we clearly show that the reduction in short interest overcompensates the price effect. Our observations suggest a fundamental shift in the hedge fund’s shorting policies towards less concentrated shorting but also suggest less efficient price discovery