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The relationship between education and labour force structure in African countries: gender comparison
Le, Duc Anh ; Chytilová, Julie (advisor) ; Šedivý, Marek (referee)
This thesis investigates the association between education and person's labour market status in African countries, with specific focus on Ethiopia, Nigeria, and Sierra Leone. Data from the most recent household surveys conducted by respec- tive countries' statistical agencies are applied to this research. The analysis was further broken down by sex to examine, whether similar results could be derived for male and female population. This was achieved by carrying out the series of gender-specific logit models. The findings of this thesis suggest that more edu- cated people are more likely to engage in formal employment and less likely to engage in subsistence farming, regardless of gender or country. However, no clear association was found between education and unemployment. Furthermore, the returns to male's education were at least as significant as female's returns, if not larger, in terms of formal employment incidence. Keywords education, formal employment, gender disparity, subsistence farming, logit
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Fighting Fake News with Accuracy: Dual Processing Perspective
Harutyunyan, Mikayel ; Chytilová, Julie (advisor) ; Červinka, Michal (referee)
The phenomenon of "fake news", or misleading online content, is increasingly worrisome due to its large-scale socio-economic impact. Researchers and practitioners attempted to understand what drives the virality and believability of fake news and how to reduce its influence. This research aims to shed light on these questions. Building upon a theoretical account positing that people share fake news because they simply fail to engage in deliberate thinking, we designed an accuracy prompt intervention to encourage people to think effortfully. In a pre-registered study conducted via Prolific (N = 520), we find limited evidence supporting accuracy prompts stylized as warning labels, but only for increasing sharing discernment in true, not fake news. The veracity of news articles does not impact sharing intentions, despite having a sizeable effect on accuracy judgments. This and other findings support the dual processing theory of cognition in the context of fake news. Predispositions towards more intuitive thinking increased belief in fake news and higher distrust in true news. Conversely, a better ability to engage in effortful thinking increases truth discernment. In addition, confirmation bias decreases truth discernment and increases sharing intentions. Politically concordant true headlines are...
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Shifting punishment on minorities: experimental evidence of scapegoating
Bauer, Michal ; Cahlíková, J. ; Chytilová, Julie ; Roland, G. ; Želinský, T.
This paper provides experimental evidence showing that members of a majority group systematically shift punishment on innocent members of an ethnic minority. We develop a new incentivized task, the Punishing the Scapegoat Game, to measure how injustice affecting a member of one’s own group shapes punishment of an unrelated bystander (“a scapegoat”). We manipulate the ethnic identity of the scapegoats and study interactions between the majority group and the Roma minority in Slovakia. We find that when no harm is done, there is no evidence of discrimination against the ethnic minority. In contrast, when a member of one’s own group is harmed, the punishment ”passed” on innocent individuals more than doubles when they are from the minority, as compared to when they are from the dominant group. These results illuminate how individualized tensions can be transformed into a group conflict, dragging minorities into conflicts in a way that is completely unrelated to their behavior.
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Income Inequality and Happiness: A Meta-Analysis
Kamenická, Lucie ; Havránková, Zuzana (advisor) ; Chytilová, Julie (referee)
The relationship between income inequality and happiness is central to a host of welfare policies. If higher income inequality puts people down, advocating for income redistribution from the rich to the poor could make society happier. We show, however, that this popular consensus on the relationship's direction is rather absent in the academic literature. Based on the 868 observations col- lected from 53 studies and controlling for 62 aspects of study design, we use state-of-the-art meta-analysis techniques to identify several important drivers of the efect. Unless each study gets the same weight, the literature is driven by publication bias pushing the estimates against the popular consensus. While geographical diferences dominate among the systematic infuences of the re- lationship's magnitude, the relationship is also strongly afected by various methods and data the authors use in the primary studies. Most prominently, it matters if authors control for diferent individual's characteristics, such as perceived trust in people or their health status.
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Using survey questions to measure preferences: lessons from an experimental validation in Kenya
Bauer, Michal ; Chytilová, Julie ; Miguel, E.
Can a short survey instrument reliably measure a range of fundamental economic preferences across diverse settings? We focus on survey questions that systematically predict behavior in incentivized experimental tasks among German university students (Becker et al. 2016) and were implemented among representative samples across the globe (Falk et al. 2018). This paper presents results of an experimental validation conducted among low-income individuals in Nairobi, Kenya. We find that quantitative survey measures -- hypothetical versions of experimental tasks -- of time preference, attitude to risk and altruism are good predictors of choices in incentivized experiments, suggesting these measures are broadly experimentally valid. At the same time, we find that qualitative questions -- self-assessments -- do not correlate with the experimental measures of preferences in the Kenyan sample. Thus, caution is needed before treating self-assessments as proxies of preferences in new contexts.\n
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What behavioural economics can teach us about prevention: another way of fighting Covid-19
Bauer, Michal ; Chytilová, Julie
Every one of us can help limit the spread of the Covid-19 virus today, through our everyday behaviour. Research from behavioural science to date has shown how individuals, private organizations and state institutions can all contribute to changes in behaviour that are effective in prevention. Thanks to the studies that have been carried out so far, we know quite a lot about how the virus spreads most frequently and what kinds of behaviour are most effective in preventing that spread. Washing our hands with soap, avoiding touching our faces and stifling any coughs or sneezes into the air are all very effective. However, research has shown that simply being informed about all this is not sufficient for people to change their behaviour. People have a tendency to forget, which is enhanced by tiredness and inattention, many people also tend to procrastinate and not to do things even though they are aware of wanting to do them. Furthermore, it is difficult to change our long-established habits. Most existing research into behavioural prevention is, quite naturally, from developing countries, where the spread of infectious diseases has been a more topical problem than in the economically developed countries. These studies have shown that frequent, simple reminders can be very beneficial. Making hand-washing facilities available to the public does not mean that people will use them. Their placement within the public space and their visibility play a key role. We must think carefully about how to create an environment in which the target\nbehaviour is easily carried out, people are constantly reminded of it, and it gradually becomes automatic. Our habits, which are very hard for us to shake off, often act as a barrier to regular, proper hand-washing at home. People tend to wash their hands too quickly and not thoroughly enough. Even when we know how to wash our hands properly, doing so systematically, several times a day for twenty seconds at a time is no easy task.
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The Wage Curve and Regional Salary Differentials in the Czech Republic
Trubelík, Ivan ; Mysíková, Martina (advisor) ; Chytilová, Julie (referee)
The phenomenon of the Wage curve, discovered by Blanchflower and Oswald, has shown a remarkable persistence in time and across different countries. It relates the regional unemployment rate negatively to the absolute level of wages. This work examines the presence of the wage curve in the Czech Republic by two different models using district level data. A panel model is constructed for 2008-2017 and a cross-sectional model with additional control variables is specified for 2011. The data on average wage in this work are related to specific employees with multiple sources of income. The wage curve is then found with a coefficient of -0.42 for the longitudinal analysis and -0.78 for isolated cross- section. However, after including fixed regional effects in the panel model, the wage-unemployment elasticity diminishes to zero. The other part of this work studies the convergence in the Czech Republic district wage levels. By means of σ and β convergence indicators, it is concluded that the wages converged in the period of 2008-2017, with a faster rate in years 2013-2017. JEL Classification J22, J31, J51, R15 Keywords Wage curve, Unemployment, Regional wage, Czech Republic, Labor economics, Wage conver- gence Title The Wage Curve and Regional Salary Differen- tials in the Czech Republic Author's e-mail...
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