Party On: The Labor Market Returns to Social Networks

社交网络的劳动力市场回报

时间：2022年5月11日（周三）10：00-11：30

参会方式：线上zoom平台（若有意参会，请发送姓名、学院至18701189960@163.com以获取会议链接，仅限北大师生）

主持人：（国发院）赵耀辉、李玲、刘国恩、雷晓燕、张丹丹、易君健
       （经院）秦雪征、石菊、王耀璟、袁野、Kevin Devereux

主讲人：盛抒杨（University of California at Los Angeles） 

论文摘要： 

We investigate the returns to friendships during adolescence on wages in adulthood. Using data from the Add Health panel surveys, we document that individuals make investments to accumulate friends and other forms of social capital. We develop a model where homophily (the similarity between individuals) and coordination play crucial roles in the decision to socialize and study. These, in turn, determine educational attainment and network formation, which generate returns in the labor market. Our model also implies that both education and the number of friends are potentially correlated with the error term in wage regressions. To address this, we implement a novel procedure that assumes the returns to schooling range from 5 and 15%, and instrument for friendships using homophily measures to obtain bounds on the returns to friendships. We estimate that having one more friend adolescence has an impact on wage earnings that ranges between 4 and 10%, comparable to a broad set of estimates of the return to an additional year of schooling. These effects are likely mediated by the improved social skills of individuals with many friends in adolescence, who are more likely to be extroverted as adults and take on managerial positions in the labor market.

主讲人简介：

Shuyang Sheng is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Economics at University of California at Los Angeles. She holds a Ph.D. in Economics from University of Southern California. Her primary research areas are econometrics, social networks, and labor economics. She specializes in developing econometric methodology for network formation and social interaction models. Her paper titled “A Structural Econometric Analysis of Network Formation Games Through Subnetworks” has been published at Econometrica.