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Role Models, High School Management and Female Engagement in STEM: Evidence from the Czech Republic
Grosman, Jiří ; Zápal, Jan (advisor) ; Jann, Ole (referee)
Title: Role Models, High School Management and Female Engagement in STEM: Evidence from the Czech Republic Author: Jiří Grosman, BSc Institute: CERGE-EI Supervisor: PhDr. Jan Zapal, Ph.D., CERGE-EI Abstract: The fact that the gender wage gap remains at least in part driven by women's self-selection out of profitable career choices has been an established fact in the labour economics literature. What has been given comparatively less attention by economists, however, are the motivating factors of such self-selection. In this thesis, I design an empirical strategy aimed to assess the strength of a particular driver of differential gendered choices: high school management, and the associated policy intervention. Specifically, I examine the STEM preferences of high school students using population data on Czech university applicants between the years of 2007-2021. By employing both matching and a difference- in-differences estimation framework to facilitate causal interpretation, I argue that school mentoring programmes, and the way the school is being run, can significantly affect the choices made by a non-negligible number of female students - an inference corroborated by the data and my subsequent analysis. Keywords: gender gap; STEM; high school; education 1
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Effects of Voter Privacy on the Public Choice: How Microtargeted Advertisement Affects the Election Results and Voters Behaviour
Illichmann, Vít ; Jann, Ole (advisor) ; Zápal, Jan (referee)
The thesis analyses the phenomenon of targeted political advertising and its influence on policy. In addition, it is concerned with incentives for candidates to breach the privacy of voters. To aid my analysis, I build a simple voting model with imperfect information, where extreme and moderate candidates compete to maximise their proportional electorate support. I show that the information aggregation process on the side of the candidate significantly changes voting outcomes, and insufficient privacy protection increases equilibrium support for the extreme candidate. Further, I show that the extreme candidate has a higher incentive to breach the privacy of the voters in comparison with his moderate opponent. The result of my analysis might have policy implications regarding the regulation of targeted political advertisements on social media. My results rely on the assumption of behavioural conformity of political discourse on social media, which is an empirically documented phenomenon. My thesis adds to a sparse strain of theoretical literature on targeted political advertising. Key words: Targeted political advertising, Online privacy protection, Policy polarisation, Social media, Micro-targeting 1 Introduction 1
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An equivalence between rational inattention problems and complete-information conformity games
Ilinov, Pavel ; Jann, Ole
We consider two types of models: (i) a rational inattention problem (as known from the literature) and (ii) a conformity game, in which fully informed players find it costly to deviate from average behavior. We show that these problems are equivalent to each other both from the perspective of the participant and the outside observer: Each individual faces identical trade-offs in both situations, and an observer would not be able to distinguish the two models from the choice data they generate. We also establish when individual behavior in the conformity game maximizes welfare.
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Using Bluetooth technology for COVID-19 contact tracing
Jann, Ole ; Kocourek, Pavel ; Steiner, Jakub
The coronavirus is transmitted indiscriminately through proximity, which makes tracing infections difficult. Bluetooth tracing apps can reliably record transmission possibilities even when the participants do not know each other and do not remember the interaction. This can be done with a high degree of privacy. A well-designed app provides a similar level of privacy to not using an app at all. Decentralized data storage means that the privacy and security of the system is highly resilient against exploitation by any powerful actor (such as a government). A disadvantage of protecting privacy through decentralization is that tracing apps need to be taken up by the population one person at a time. Their use cannot be checked remotely and hence cannot be effectively mandated by governments or health authorities. A very high degree of take-up is necessary to make them an effective weapon against the virus. The eRouška app by COVID19cz follows these principles and offers a very high degree of privacy protection. Specifically, it does not collect any data except the phone numbers of non-infected users, and only collects anonymized meeting data (and no location or other metadata) of infected users – this data is only available to a hygienist after voluntary data transmission by the user. No data is transmitted to the server without explicit user agreement.
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An overview of foreign testing practices from an economic and statistical perspective
Steiner, Jakub ; Kulveit, J. ; Matysková, L. ; Jann, Ole ; Kocourek, Pavel ; Novák, Vladimír
Our testing algorithm for Covid-19 infection and how we adapt it in response to the epidemic's progress, contact tracing technology, and knowledge of the virus, will be crucial in our fight against the epidemic. That algorithm must be developed with input from epidemiologists, biochemists and others. As economists, we believe we also play a relevant role, since testing for Covid-19 infections is a classic case of the problem of allocating rare goods – tests. We have compiled the following annotated overview of testing practices abroad as a starting point for an interdisciplinary discussion, fully aware of our lack of sufficient knowledge in epidemiology, biochemistry and medicine.
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Collecting personal data for smart COVID-19 tracing: how to motivate people and not scare them off
Jann, Ole
South Korea and Singapore, unlike many other countries, have recorded a slow increase in the number of cases of COVID-19 infection and a relatively low number of fatalities. Both these countries have not only carried out large numbers of tests, but have also used the information gained through them to trace the spread of the infection as quickly as possible, with the help of individual interviews, medical records, mobile phone data, credit card transaction data and CCTV recordings. Those who had come into contact with the chain of infection were then placed into strict quarantine. This substantially limited the spread of the infection and enabled softer restrictive measures to be taken across the remainder of the population, with a lesser impact on the economy. This strategy would now be possible in the Czech Republic, too. It would, however, require specific rules to be adopted, the principles of which are explained in this study. Each country only has one chance to implement them properly. Residents should be offered incentives to motivate them to cooperate by providing true and complete information, but these should not simultaneously provide undesirable motivations. Efforts to force people to provide detailed personalized data for the purpose of contact tracing and tracking the spread of the infection can, in fact, lead people to hide symptoms of illness or to hide the fact that they have recently been in contact with someone. It is thus necessary to find a compromise between the direct effectiveness of an imposed order and its negative side effects. Collecting data for the purposes of tracking the spread of an infection poses a greater problem in Europe than in East Asian countries, because in Europe there is less of a tradition of the local community enforcing the law for itself and there is greater mistrust of the state. Strong data protection is therefore crucial for the tracking strategy to succeed at all. Even a relatively low level of unwillingness among residents to cooperate in providing data, let alone a broader culture of non-cooperation and “cunning avoidance”, would mean the tracking system did not function sufficiently well. Data collected from residents for the purpose of tracking the spread of infection should be stored separate from other personal data in the state’s possession, beyond the reach of enforcement officials, tax investigators, the justice system or researchers, with the exception of those working directly on fighting the infection. The periods during which data are to be collected and retained should be clearly limited. Poorly established incentives for people to reveal personal information for the purposes of tracking the infection open the door to further contagion and result in huge economic damage, harm to people’s health and the loss of human lives.\n
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