Research

Job Market Paper

Does Intelligence Shield Children from the Effects of Parental Unemployment?
  • Nurfatima Jandarova
Current literature offers several potential channels through which parental unemployment can affect children. In this paper, I provide new evidence based on variation across intelligence that identifies loss of human capital investment as the driving mechanism. I find that higher intelligence mitigates some of the impacts, but not all. Parental unemployment is more harmful to the education of children with higher intelligence. This forces them to start their careers at lower-paying jobs and continues to weigh down on their wages even later in life. Nevertheless, higher intelligence helps narrow the gap labour supply, job ranking and monthly earnings over time.
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Working papers

Selection and Roy Model
We model the evolution of the distribution of genotypes in European populations over the past 14 thousand years. In our model, the evolution is driven by selection operating after a shift in the productivity of agriculture, induced by a well-documented climate change, in a standard Roy model in which individuals self-select into one of two sectors (agriculture or hunter-gathering). We then test the model in two data sets, one of ancient and one of modern DNA datasets, matching the observed distributions of genetic variables of interest (allele frequencies and lineages). The model extends a standard Wright-Fisher model. We estimate the model and find support for our main hypothesis, namely that a major shift in the distribution of allele frequencies (in a direction favouring higher cognitive skills) occurred after the climate warming at the end of the Younger Dryas (11,600 years BPE) made agriculture more productive than hunter-gathering. The general implication we draw is that historical transformations (in our case climate change and technological change) can affect the distribution of genotype and thus institutions, rather than the other way round.
SSRN Poster FIT WP 27
Individual Characteristics and Earnings
We study how observed individual characteristics afect earnings of individuals. The characteristics we study are individual personality traits (including cognitive ability) and family background. We make use of data providing information on the individual characteristics rather than estimating them as latent variables. Their contribution may be indirect (facilitating the acquisition of education) or direct (perhaps afecting productivity). We estimate the fraction of these two contributions through regression analysis and structural model, and fnd that the contribution of both pathways is signifcant. These characteristics may be in part determined endogenously. To estimate the proportion due to original individual characteristics we use measures provided by Polygenic Scores for education years and fuid intelligence. The marginal efects of these scores is signifcant and high. The indirect contribution (operating though acquisition of college) is around one third of the total efect.
FIT WP 26
Political Participation and Party Preferences
Political behavior of citizens includes political participation and preferences. We show with UK data that political behavior is afected by individual characteristics that are also determining educational attainment, including cognitive abilities and intelligence. Our analysis reconciles the rational choice assumption with the acquisition of costly political information, which would otherwise give only negligible benefts. We disentangle the causal pathways by identifying efects operating directly and those operating indirectly, in particular through education and income. We address the issue of endogeneity of cognitive skills using polygenic scores, and show that an important component of the causal factors is genetic.
FIT WP 25

Resting papers

Multiple Imputation of University Degree Attainment
Abstract 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 for- mal 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 indis- tinguishable. In this paper, we differentiate the institution types among degree-holders using a multiple imputation technique in the UKHLS and BHPS datasets. 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.
  • EUI Microeconometrics working group (February 2020)
Fertility Choice and Intelligence in Developed Countries
Abstract We document that fertility may be negatively associated, at least in advanced societies, with higher intelligence, particularly for women. An explanation of the finding is provided in a model describing the choice of individuals (in particular women) facing a trade-off between parenthood and career concerns. With positive complementarity between intelligence and effort in education and career advancement, higher intelligence individuals, particularly women, will sacrifice parenthood to education. Thus, current education and labor market policies may be imposing an uneven penalty on more talented women. We test and find support for the model in a large data set for the UK (Understanding Society), using several alternative measures of fertility. Our results provide a new interpretation of the well documented fact in demographic studies that education is negatively associated with fertility: it is not education as an outcome, but as an aspiration that reduces fertility.
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