Browsing by Person "Osikominu, Aderonke"

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Are sociocultural factors important for studying a science university major?
(2015) Grossmann, Volker; Osikominu, Aderonke; Osterfeld, Marius
This paper examines the role of the sociocultural background of students for choosing STEM fields in university. We combine rich survey data on university graduates in Switzerland with municipality level information from the census as well as nationwide elections and referenda to characterize a students home environment with respect to religious and political attitudes towards gender equality and science-related issues. Our empirical estimates are based on a structural Roy model which accounts for differences in costs (relative distance to the next technical university) and earnings across majors as well as for selection bias. Our findings suggest that male students from conservative municipalities are more likely to study a STEM field, whereas the sociocultural background plays little role for the major choice of females.
Essays on tackling economic inequalities
(2016) Fuchs, Benjamin; Osikominu, Aderonke
This thesis provides a differentiated picture of two interventions and one policy reform to alleviate economic inequality. In two chapters this dissertation examines whether out-of-school activities affect behavioral outcomes reflecting character, social and executive function skills. The first essay in this thesis analyzes the effect of performing sports on a regular basis on the formation of character and social skills. The findings confirm that sports is generally a social activity. For youths from less advantaged family backgrounds sports constitutes often the only quality pastime they engage in. Athletic involvement has beneficial effects on a broad range of character skills. These effects are largely driven by youths who do not engage in any other structured activity. Further, the effects can be interpreted as a broader effect of having access to an enriched social environment. The second essay examines the effect of working part-time while attending full-time schooling on the development of character skills and occupational choice strategies. Comparing adolescents who hold a job with adolescents who do not work, the former spend less time in front of a screen and invest more time in academic learning. Focusing on the time use of employed adolescents, working part-time has an ambivalent effect on time invested in other activities. It reduces their homework time as well as their nonproductive screen time. The results imply that holding a paid job while still in school reduces the uncertainty about own interests and talents and reduces the dependency on parents. A third essay evaluates the impact of the Tenancy Law Reform Act in 2001, a policy which targets to protect especially low-income households against rent increase. Germany is one of the European countries with the highest percentage of the population who lives in tenancies. This illustrates the importance of a functioning tenancy law, socially and economically. This essay analyzes the effect of the reform on the level of rents as well as on the residency discount. The two substantial parts of the reform were the reduction of the maximum rent increases for sitting tenants and the reduction of the minimum notice period until termination of a tenancy by the tenant. Estimating the effect over the distribution of rents, the reform shows a significant negative effect on rents that is stronger at higher quantiles. The annual residency discount increases with the reform during the first three years of a tenancy and vanishes thereafter. The evidence suggests that the reform was successful in curtailing rent increases especially for expensive apartments early in a tenancy. This thesis provides a differentiated picture on how economic inequalities can be alleviated. On the one side, this thesis focuses on the formation of character skills which are helpful for bringing especially unskilled people into employment and to better paid jobs. On the other side, this thesis focuses on a tenancy law reform that targeted to protect tenants against rent increases. While beneficial effects of structured leisure activities on the formation of character skills can be detected, one may be concerned that the tenancy law reform may not have been sufficiently targeted if considering the target of the reform to protect especially low-income households against rent increases.
Overconfidence and gender differences in wage expectations
(2020) Satlukal, Sascha; Reuter, Mirjam; Pfeifer, Gregor; Osikominu, Aderonke; Briel, Stephanie
We analyze the impact of (over-)confidence on gender differences in expected start-ing salaries using elicited beliefs of prospective university students in Germany. According to our results, female students have lower wage expectations and are less overconfident than their male counterparts. Oaxaca-Blinder decompositions of the mean show that 7.7% of the gender gap in wage expectations is attributable to a higher overconfidence of males. Decompositions of the unconditional quantiles of expected salaries suggest that the contribution of gender differences in confidence to the gender gap is particularly strong at the bottom and top of the wage expectation distribution.
Perceived wages and the gender gap in STEM fields
(2018) Pfeifer, Gregor; Osikominu, Aderonke
We estimate gender differences in elicited wage expectations among German Uni- versity students applying for STEM and non-STEM fields. Descriptively, women expect to earn less than men and also have lower expectations about wages of average graduates across different fields. Using a two-step estimation procedure accounting for self-selection, we find that the gender gap in own expected wages can be explained to the extent of 54-69% by wage expectations for average graduates across different fields. However, gender differences in the wage expectations for average graduates across different fields do not contribute to explaining the gender gap in the choice of STEM majors.