Research
Labour
Economics
Can
Gender Parity Break the Glass Ceiling? Evidence from a Repeated Randomized
Experiment
joint with
Berta Esteve-Volart
FEDEA Working Paper #2007/15
See updated version, October 2008 (long
version) (short version)
Revise and
Resubmit, Review of Economic Studies
This
paper studies whether the gender composition of recruiting committees matters.
We make
use
of the exceptional evidence provided by Spanish public examinations, where the
allocation of
candidates
to evaluating committees is random. We analyze how the chances of success of
150,000
female
and male candidates to the four main Corps of the Spanish Judiciary over
1987-2006 were
affected
by the gender of their evaluators. We find that a female (male) candidate is
significantly
less
likely to pass the exam whenever she is randomly assigned to a committee where
the share
of
female (male) evaluators is relatively greater. Evidence from multiple choice
tests suggests
that
this is due to the fact that female majority committees overestimate the
quality of male candidates.
Press:
-This paper has been featured in ‘La Gaceta de los Negocios’, ‘La Vanguardia’ and ‘El País’ (all in Spanish)
-A previous version of the paper was
featured in ‘El País’, ‘La Vanguardia’, ‘ABC’ and ‘La Gaceta de los Negocios’ (all in Spanish)
-Listen to the radio
interview in one the main Spanish radio programs: La Ventana, Cadena SER
-An article based on
this paper appeared in Voxeu.org
-An article based
on this paper appeared in SociedadAbierta.es (in Spanish)
joint with
María José Pérez Villadóniga
Universidad Carlos III Working Paper
#080601
In
many dimensions the ability to assess knowledge depends
critically
on the observer’s own knowledge of that dimension. Building
on
this feature, this paper offers both theoretical and empirical evidence
showing
that, in those tasks where multidisciplinary knowledge is
required,
evaluations exhibit a similar-to-me effect: candidates who excel
in
the same dimensions as the evaluator tend to be ranked relatively
higher.
It is also shown that, if races or genders differ in their distribution
of
ability, group discrimination will arise unless evaluators (i) are
well
informed about the extent of intergroup differences and (ii) they may
condition
their assessments on candidates’ group belonging.
Press:
-This
paper has been featured in the business newspaper
‘Expansion’
joint with
Mauro Sylos Labini
NBER Working Paper 13621
Forthcoming in NBER Labor Market Intermediation
Conference Volume, The University of Chicago Press, 2008.
This
paper evaluates the impact of the availability of electronic labor markets
on
university-to-work transition. In particular, we analyze the effect of the
intermediation
activity carried on by the interuniversity consortium AlmaLaurea
on
graduates’ labor market outcomes. Different timing of universities’ enrolment
in
AlmaLaurea produces counterfactuals that allow us to overcome the problems
faced
by previous empirical investigations. The evaluation is performed applying
the
difference-in-differences method to a repeated cross section data set. It
is
shown that, if the usual assumption concerning parallel outcomes holds,
AlmaLaurea
reduces individual unemployment probability and improves matching
quality.
Interestingly, it is also found that on-line intermediaries foster graduates’
geographical
mobility.
Press:
-This
paper has been featured in the business newspaper ‘Il Sole 24 ore’ (in
Italian)
Economics of Education
Differential
Grading Standards and University Funding: Evidence from Italy
FEDEA Working Paper #2008/07
CESifo Economic Studies 54 (2), 149-176.
joint with
Mauro Sylos Labini and Natalia Zinovyeva
This
paper documents that grades vary significantly across Italian universities and
degrees.
We
provide evidence suggesting that these differences reflect the heterogeneity of
grading
standards.
A straightforward implication of this result is that university funding schemes
based
on
students’ academic performance do not necessary favour universities that
generate higher value
added.
We test this for the case of the Italian funds allocation system, which rewards
universities
according
to the number of exams passed by their students. We find that university
departments
that
rank higher according to this indicator actually tend to be significantly worse
in terms of
their
graduates’ performance in the labour market.
Press:
-An article based on this paper
appeared in Voxeu.org
The
Endogeneity of University Grading Standards: Evidence from Italy
joint with
Mauro Sylos Labini and Natalia Zinovyeva
In this paper
we show that, in Italy, grades tend to increase (decrease)
over
time in those university departments that face lower (higher) demand.
Moreover,
we observe that graduates from high-grading departments tend to
perform
significantly worse in the labour market and are less likely to pass
professional
qualification exams. The evidence thus suggests that variations
in
grading standards may be contributing to the creation of labour market
mismatch.
Industrial Organization
Complementarity
in Innovation Strategies: Evidence from Pharmaceutical Dynamic Panel Data
A series
of empirical works have pointed out the existence of a positive correlation
between
the different internal and external innovation strategies of a firm. This
finding
has
been typically interpreted as a consequence of the complementary nature of these
innovation
strategies. However, this inference draws on a rather uncomfortable assumption:
the
observability of every factor that may affect the strategies pay-offs in a
correlated way.
To
overcome this caveat, we exploit several dynamic panel data intertemporal
testable implications
of
complementarity that require weaker observability conditions. We propose
alternative
tests
which are robust both to the presence of firm specific effects and to the
potential existence
of some relevant but unobservable variable, as
long as its time persistence is limited. The
methodology
is applied to the innovation strategies of the main 50 pharmaceutical firms
between
1992 and 2000. Although contemporaneously a
positive clustering of strategies is observed,
the
discovery of a negative intertemporal relationship suggests that some
unobservable volatile
factor
is likely to be the origin of the apparent cross-sectional complementarity.
Further
productivity
and instrumental variables estimations support this interpretation.
Work in Progress
Billing by the Page (joint with Benito Arruñada)
Intermodal Competition in Spain: Some Empirical Evidence (joint with
Javier Campos)
Gender and Overconfidence in Selection Processes: Evidence from Public
Examinations (joint with Berta Esteve-Volart)
The State Nobility: Meritocracy or Nepotism? (joint with
Berta Esteve-Volart)
Top Civil Service: A State Nobility? (joint with
Berta Esteve-Volart)
Universal Purpose Technologies: The diffusion of hindu-arabic numerals (joint with
Peter Wardley)
The Economics of