EssaysOnLaborAndEducationEconomics

Lokting Yim, Purdue University

Abstract

My dissertation consists of three chapters in the field of labor and education economics. The first chapter studies the impact of early morning classes on students’ educational trajectories. The second chapter explores how college course shutouts affects students’ educational outcomes. The third chapter investigates the impact of kindness on wage returns.In the first chapter, I examine how early morning classes affect students’ educational trajectories by exploiting a natural experiment which randomized class time to students. I find that enrolling in early morning classes lowers students’ course grades and the likelihood of future STEM course enrollment. Early morning classes also cause a 79% reduction that a student study in the corresponding major. To understand the mechanism, I conducted a survey of undergraduate students enrolled in an introductory course, some of whom were assigned to a 7:30 AM section. I find evidence of a decrease in human capital accumulation and learning quality for early morning sections.The second chapter is written with Rich W. Patterson and Kevin J. Mumford. We explore what happens when college students do not get the courses they want. We use a natural experiment at a large public university in which freshman students are conditionally randomly assigned enrollment in over-subscribed courses. We find that first-semester freshman students who are shut out from an over-subscribed course are approximately half as likely to ever take the oversubscribed course and approximately 43% less likely to ever take a course in the same subject. Students who are shut out of a course are also 4% (0.05 percentage points) less likely to major in a corresponding subject. The effects of shutouts on major choice go beyond shifting students to closely related majors.The third chapter explores the impact of kindness on wage returns across five occupation classes: unskilled, partly skilled, skilled, managerial, and professional. Using data from the 1958 National Child Development Study (NCDS), the study reveals that kind women are rewarded while kind men face penalties in unskilled occupations. Gender norm bias and workplace cultures that undervalue interpersonal skills may explain this disparity. However, both kind men and women in managerial roles receive rewards, with men enjoying higher returns. This may be attributed to the greater need for interpersonal communication skillsin managerial positions, where kindness reduces communication costs and enhances productivity. These findings highlight the significance of kindness, gender bias, and interpersonal dynamics in wage outcomes.

Degree

Ph.D.

Advisors

Prowse, Purdue University.

Subject Area

Developmental psychology|Education|Educational evaluation|Educational tests & measurements|Gender studies|Higher education|Labor economics|Labor relations|Neurosciences|Psychology|Science education

COinS