Skills, Preferences and Labor Market Outcomes (News and Research 164)
The automation revolution is upon us: how can education systems best prepare the workers of the future? | Automation is accelerating the race between education and technology. The ability of education systems to respond to the demand for higher-order skills will be crucial for mitigating the income inequality resulting from automation. But many of Europe’s education systems still struggle to provide basic skills to large proportions of the population. The idea that workers would find themselves caught in a race between education and technology emerged in the 1970s with Dutch economist, and first recipient of the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences, Jan Tinbergen’s observation that technology benefits high-skilled workers’ productivity more than that of low-skilled workers…
3rd IZA/HSE Workshop on Skills and Preferences and Labor Market Outcomes in Post-transition and Emerging Economies | Higher School of Economics, Saint Petersburg | September 26-27, 2019 (organized by Hartmut Lehmann (University of Bologna; HSE; IZA), Vladimir Gimpelson (HSE; IZA), Rostislav Kapeliushnikov (HSE), Alexander Muravyev (HSE; IZA)):
- Furio Rosati presented a discrete choice experiment in Kenya to show what jobs youth want, finding that youth in general prefer jobs that resemble formal jobs regardless of the tasks involved
- Jose Galdo presented a paper Demand-driven Vocational Skills Training for the Youth: Experimental Evidence from Mongolia showing effectiveness of training – short term benefits and heterogeneity – but provision of information reduces dropout
- Dorothee Buehler presented on How Personality Traits Influence Occupational Attainment in Vietnam & Thailand
- Francesco Pastore presented on Personality Traits and Working Poverty in Mongolia
- Diego De la Fuente presented Intergenerational Transmission of Bilingualism and the Labor Market: Evidence from Mexico and estimates employment and earnings effects of indigenous peoples speaking indigenous language (as well as Spanish) – it is beneficial
- Anna Kochanova in Minds for the Market: Non-Cognitive Skills in Post-Soviet Countries looks at institutions and non-cognitive skills, uses STEP data (as well as World Value Survey), finds that the collapse of Soviet Union negatively affected the development of non-cognitive skills
- Ahmed Elsayed in his paper Gender Bias in Human Capital Investment: The Unexpected Effect of Reducing Years of Compulsory Schooling in a Developing Country: Egypt reduced compulsory schooling in 1988 from 9 to 8; yet this increased: completion of compulsory by 10%, secondary completion by 10%, total years of schooling 0.5-0.8 years, & returns to schooling
- Zuzana Brixiova presented The Digital Gender Gap and Entrepreneurship in Emerging Europe
- Cara Ebert presented on Child-specific Son Preference, Birth Order and Cognitive Skills in Early Childhood
- Alexis Belianin presented Behavior and Beliefs in Long-distance Interactive Online Experiments between Moscow, Tomsk and Samara – First Results
- Harry Patrinos presented Measuring Human Capital introducing a new data set measuring learning in 164 countries & several stylized facts: although enrollment has increased worldwide learning has stagnated; girls outperform boys on learning; learning is associated with growth on a global scale; associations with growth are heterogenous; human capital accounts for 1/5 to ½ of cross-country income differences
- Alessando Toppeta in his paper Local Labour Market and Parental Perceived Returns to Schooling: Evidence from Panel Data discussed perceived returns in North Macedonia, where despite high returns to secondary, enrollment is not universal; study shows that variations in local labor market affect significantly the way parents update their expectations, with both increases in unemployment and in local returns to schooling translating into increased expected returns; parental subjective expectations are strong predictors for the probability of the child to be enrolled in secondary school
- Invited lecture by Hilmar Schneider (Chief Executive Officer of IZA) on Digitalization and the Future of Work
- Vladimir Gimpelson presented Post-school Wage Growth in the Context of the Transition to a Market Economy, showing that cohorts which entered labor market before transition (80s or earlier) started to face declining returns to experience
- Nauro Campos in his paper Goulash Labor Market Structural Reforms: Hungary, 1986-2016: skill premium almost doubled from 6% in 1986 to 12% in 2016 peaking in 2004
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Education, economics and public policy 