English  Castellano

 

Research

 

 

Labour Economics

Economics of Education

Industrial Organization

Work in Progress 

 

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)

 

 

Why Do I Like People Like Me?

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’

 

Do On-Line Labor Market Intermediaries Matter? The impact of AlmaLaurea on University-to-Work transition

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 Babel

Media

  

 

HOME

C.V.

RESEARCH

TEACHING

PUBLIC EXAMS (OPOSICIONES)