Convergence Across Castes

时间：4月17日（周一）10：10—11：40

地点：承泽园131教室

主讲人：Chenyu Hou (CUHK Shenzhen)

摘要：India has witnessed a remarkable wage catch-up by the historically disadvantaged scheduled castes and tribes (SC/STs) towards non-SC/ST levels during the period 1983-2012. To provide a structural explanation for the catch-up, we develop a multi-sector, heterogenous agent model where individuals differ in innate ability as well as their caste identity. Castes differ in their costs of schooling and accessing sectoral labor markets. This induces caste-based talent misallocations of agents in schooling and employment. Using the model, we show that sectoral productivity growth during 1983-2012 can explain 72 percent of the observed wage convergence between the castes. Rising education and sectoral reallocation of workers induced by the productivity growth are the primary drivers of this predicted convergence. We estimate significant welfare costs of the talent misallocations induced by the caste distortions.

主讲人简介：Chenyu Hou obtained his PhD from Vancouver School of Economics, University of British Columbia. He is currently an assistant professor at the School of Management and Economics, CUHK Shenzhen. His research interest is in  Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics, with specific topics related to expectation formation, information acquisition, and macro development.