Wednesday 1st December 2021

• Speaker: Oksana Leukhina, Federal Reserve Bank of St Louis
• Time: 14:45-15:45 GMT
• Title: Gender Gap (joint work with Gulliaume Vandenbroucke)

We employ the Ben-Porath (1967) human capital model to study the evolution of the gender wage gap over the long run and consider the effect of changing lifecycle profiles of female market hours. In so doing, we find that the implied response in unobserved investment in human capital accumulation accounts for most of the long run gender wage gap dynamics.

This finding is consistent with the labour economists’ view that changing selection on unobservables played a critical role in the gender wage gap dynamics. Our contribution is to make explicit and quantify the link between market hours and (unobserved) investment in human capital.

Wednesday 8th December 2021

• Speaker: Guilhem Cassan, University of Namur
• Time: 14:45-15:45 GMT
• Title: Stopping Rule and Sex Selective Abortion: New Measures and World Evidence (joint with Jean Maria Baland and Francois Woitrin)

When parents want a specific number of children of a given gender (boys, in general), they can use two methods: the "stopping rule" and sex selective abortion. In societies in which gender preferences are prevalent, these methods can heavily affect fertility practices.

We propose two novel theory based measures of detection of these practices. Taking the perspective of the child rather than that of the family, these measures are easily implementable, precise, and rely on fewer assumptions than other measures in use.

We then propose a new method to detect the prevalence of sex selective abortion in a given society and implement it at the world level.

Wednesday 3rd November 2021

• Speaker: Prof Alexander Krumer, Molde University College
• Title: Fewer teams, more games, larger attendance? Evidence from the structural change in basketball’s EuroLeague

Professor Krumer investigated whether an increased number of games between a reduced number of high-quality teams has a positive effect on stadium attendance.

Wednesday 3rd November 2021

• Speaker: Dr Conor Lennon, University of Louisville - College of Business
• Title: Employer Sponsored Health Insurance and Labor Market Outcomes for Gay Men: Evidence from the Advent of Pre-Exposure Prophylaxis​

Dr Lennon explored how the cost of providing employer-sponsored health insurance (ESI) varies for employers based on the medical expenditures of their employees, a practice known as “experience rating.”