Research
Research
Unpacking Skill Supply and Wages
Abstract: This paper investigates how graduate wages respond to changes in the supply of graduates with similar majors, grouped together by hierarchical clustering. Using major fixed-effect and instrumental variable regressions on American Community Survey data, we estimate statistically insignificant effects. Even our most conservative specification rules out elasticities stronger than -0.3. This inelasticity is inconsistent with previous research that finds stronger effects using broader education categories (e.g., Katz and Murphy, 1992). We reconcile this by demonstrating that those previous results derive from spurious time series regressions. Finally, we explain the inelasticity by showing that different education groups have significantly overlapping skillsets.
Higher Education Peers and Labour Market Outcomes
Abstract: We investigate how much university peers affect the returns to a degree by exploiting year-to-year idiosyncratic variation in peer composition within university courses using administrative education data covering all of England. We find that having more academically able coursemates increases earnings. This effect is sufficient for the difference in peer ability between the 10th and the 90th percentile most selective courses to increase earnings by 5%. One potential mediator for this effect is improved graduation rates. However, we cannot detect any effects for peer socioeconomic status or gender and do not find any meaningful treatment effect heterogeneity.
Mass Reproducibility and Replicability: A New Hope (Large scale collaboration of over 100 economists)
IZA Discussion Paper. Revise and resubmit at Nature.
A Replication of "When a Doctor Falls from the Sky: The Impact of Easing Doctor Supply Constraints on Mortality", Okeke E.N. (2023) (with Emma McManus, Vasudha Wattal, and Ritchie Woodward)
Institute for Replication Discussion Paper