This dissertation studies the role of occupation-specific human capital in explaining the long-run decline in labor market dynamics observed in the United States for the past four decades. Chapter 1 presents empirical facts on labor market outcomes by required occupation-specific training. This is to provide evidence that (i) required length of occupation-specific training is a proxy for the specificity of human capital to perform the occupation and that (ii) increasing occupation specificity has led to the decline in labor market dynamics. First, I find from the Dictionary of Occupational Titles and O*NET that for the past four decades, within occupations, there has been an increase the amount of time needed to become trained in the occupation. I then find from the Survey of Income and Program Participation that the average wage loss experienced by occupation switchers after unemployment increases when their occupation held before unemployment has faced over time an increase in occupation-specific training. I take this as evidence that the observed increase in occupation-specific training over time has made human capital less transferable across occupations. I then proceed to use the Monthly Current Population Survey, combined with the required length of occupation-specific training by occupation from the Dictionary of Occupational Titles and O*NET, to do a shift-share decomposition of the decline in labor market outcomes. The decline in the aggregate job separation rate and the increase in unemployment duration is accounted for mostly by the increase in specific training within occupations. Motivated by my empirical analysis, in Chapter 2, I then build a search-and-matching model to learn how the increase in specificity within occupations explains the decline in the aggregate job separation rate. The main ingredients are endogenous job separations and occupation-specific human capital that workers acquire during employment and lose when they switch occupations. My model has two occupation specificity parameters: (i) the average duration of occupation-specific training and (ii) the output gap by which nontrained workers are less productive because they have not yet acquired the occupation-specific capital. To ask my model how much of a decline it predicts in the aggregate job separation rate when occupations become more specific, the occupation specificity parameters in the model are increased to match the increase in occupation specificity in the data. The increase in the average duration of occupation-specific training matches the required length of occupation-specific training from the Dictionary of Occupational Titles and O*NET. The increase in the output gap is informed by the estimated increase in the wage penalty faced by occupation switchers (relative to non-occupation switchers) when their previously held occupation requires more occupation-specific training, obtained from the Survey of Income and Program Participation. The model predicts 60% of the decline in the aggregate job separation rate. Chapter 3 relaxes the assumption that occupation switching is exogenous in Chapter 2, endogenizing occupation switching in addition to job separations. The model predicts a greater increase in the average unemployment duration in line with the data. In the model, the longer unemployment spells are due to the unemployed trained workers, whose human capital has become more specific to their previous occupation, choosing not to switch occupations. If they switch occupations, they could quickly end their unemployment spell. This would however come at the cost of larger wage cuts because their human capital has become less transferable to a different occupation. Occupation switchers would also have to earn these lower wages for a longer period of time until they become trained in their new occupation. Hence, despite a low probability of getting reemployed in the same occupation as before, previously trained workers increasingly choose not to switch occupations, which increases the average unemployment duration.

This dissertation consists of three empirical essays focused on understanding how informational and behavioral barriers influence human capital investments in developing countries. In particular, I study two key actors in education production – teachers and parents, and how their beliefs shape investments in child human capital with implications for student learning and inequality. Chapter 1 uses a field experiment with teachers in India to investigate the role and malleability of teachers’ beliefs. In many developing countries, teachers often perceive only a weak mapping between their effort and what students learn. I conduct an experimental evaluation of a psychosocial intervention in India that targets teachers’ beliefs about perceived control – self-beliefs about one’s ability to influence outcomes. I study the extent to which this intervention affects teachers’ beliefs, their effort in class, and their students’ academic performance. I devise a novel experimental task to elicit beliefs through revealed preference, about the relationship between their teaching effort and the performance of students in their classroom. I find that the intervention induced a 14% increase in teachers’ beliefs about their ability to increase learning, as measured by the revealed preference task. Treated teachers exert greater effort at the intensive margin, scoring higher on an index of classroom effort. They also spend more time grading student work and provide more detailed feedback to students. Finally, students taught by teachers in the treatment group learn more, scoring 0.09 SD higher in the end-of-year exams. These findings suggest that teacher beliefs can serve as a powerful lever for changing teaching practice and raising learning levels in developing countries. Chapter 2 studies the relationship between parental perceptions about children’s performance and parental investment in children’s human capital, and how this relationship evolves over the course of schooling. Using rich longitudinal data on investments, test scores, and parental assessments, I implement alternative specifications for the parental investment function that allow investment to depend on the entire history of lagged investment and inputs, account for past parental beliefs to circumvent reverse causality, and use household fixed effects to account for fixed characteristics at the household level. I find that compared to children with poor perceived performance, children with better perceived performance are up to 16 percentage points more likely to be enrolled in private as opposed to public schools, and receive up to 40% higher investment in schooling. This relationship intensifies as children progress from primary to secondary school. Results are robust across specifications, with evidence of complementarity between perceived ability and schooling. Within a household, parents’ behavior is reinforcing, with more spent on the child believed to be the better performer. These findings inform our understanding of parental investment response and intra-household allocation of human capital investment decisions. Chapter 3 (co-authored with Daniel Chen, Sultan Mehmood, and Shaheen Naseer) uses a field experiment to evaluate the impact of providing information about teacher value-added to public school teachers in Pakistan. We show that growth mindset training shifts teachers’ beliefs about the malleability of intelligence, and reduces stereotypes against first-generation learners and students from disadvantaged backgrounds. In contrast, exposure to narrative or empirical evidence about teacher value-added did not have statistically significant effects. We document patterns of teachers’beliefs in a resource-constrained setting and show that perceived returns to effort are increasing in parental education and past performance of students, indicating that teachers view these as complementary inputs for teaching.

本文在分析不同改革運動中的成敗關鍵，文中分析日本明治維新、中國大躍進、文化大革命及改革開放中不同經濟因素之相互影響。文中從歷史中歸納出兩種對工業化及經濟發展最重要的因素：農業生產力及教育水平。日本明治維新及中國文化大革命時農業生產力及教育水平不斷上升，導至社會工業化及經濟發展加速；大躍進時則只有教育水平上升，農業生產力提高，故此工業化最後失敗及經濟水平低下。而把這模型套在改革開放亦同樣有效： 在改革開放時，農業生產力、教育水平、工業化及經濟發展四個指標同時上升。 / Inspired by the Meiji Restoration in Japan and Cultural Revolution in China, we constructed a theoretical model that explained economic performance of both historical episodes. We argued that the two elements: agricultural productivity and human capital are vital for industrialization and hence important for economic growth. In Meiji Restoration and Cultural Revolution, agricultural productivity and human capital both increase. The employment share moving from agricultural sector to non-agricultural sector and positive economic growth were recorded during those two periods of time. The model can also be used to explain the post-reform economic performance in China. We also find qualitative evidence that the lack of one element - agricultural productivity - will not contribute to a successful industrialization and may have adverse effect in economic growth. / Detailed summary in vernacular field only. / Cheung, Ting Yuen Terry. / Thesis (M.Phil.)--Chinese University of Hong Kong, 2013. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 40-45). / Electronic reproduction. Hong Kong : Chinese University of Hong Kong, [2012] System requirements: Adobe Acrobat Reader. Available via World Wide Web. / Abstracts also in Chinese. / English Abstract --- p.i / Chinese Abstract --- p.ii / Acknowledgement --- p.iii / Chapter I. --- Introduction --- p.1 / Chapter II. --- Historical Facts --- p.7 / Chapter A. --- Two Historical Episodes with Both Elements --- p.7 / Meiji Restoration --- p.7 / Cultural Revolution --- p.11 / Chapter B. --- A Historical Episode Lack of one Element --- p.14 / Chapter C. --- Summary Note and Application --- p.17 / Chapter III. --- Model --- p.19 / Chapter A. --- Model without Capital --- p.19 / The Environment --- p.19 / Optimization --- p.21 / Comparative Statics --- p.25 / Chapter B. --- Model with Capital --- p.28 / Closed Economy --- p.28 / Small Open Economy --- p.34 / Chapter IV. --- Conclusion and Further Research --- p.35 / Remark for Further Research --- p.37 / Reference --- p.39 / Appendix --- p.45

Chapter 1: The Determinants of the Production of Research by US Universities<p>Chapter 2: Investment in Vocational and General Human Capital: A Theoretical Approach<p>Chapter 3: Urban Migrations and the Labor Market<p>Chapter 4: Local social capital and geographical mobility<p>Chapter 5: Social Supervision and Electoral Stability on the Geographical Scale in Belgium / Doctorat en Sciences économiques et de gestion / info:eu-repo/semantics/nonPublished