Speaker: Ana Abras, Associate Professor, Federal University of ABC, Brazil
Title: Entrepreneurship and Care Work for Parents During the Pandemic: Evidence from US Data
Abstract: During the pandemic, there was a surge in new business applications in the United States. We ask whether women benefited differently than men from these entrepreneurship opportunities according to the level of care work they had to provide during the health crisis. In regression exercises, we explore the variation in school and daycare closure across MSA areas in 2020 and 2021. We find with CPS data that the lack of in-person instruction is correlated with fewer mothers at work but not fewer fathers. Also, women with children present in the household were less likely to become entrepreneurs in areas lacking in-person instruction when compared to women without children. Our results suggest that the new demands from care work overwhelmed the benefits of self-employment for mothers during the pandemic.
Speaker: Chenxi Tang, PhD student, Economics
Title: The Legacy of Ancient Chinese Civil Exam on Contemporary Local Innovation
Abstract: China’s civil examination system (keju) is a long-lasting institution. By combining prefecture-level data on jinshi density—the number of individuals with the highest qualifications per 10,000 people, used as a proxy for keju influence—from 1371 to 1905 with contemporary innovation measures, I uncover persistent positive effects of historical jinshi density on contemporary innovation levels. Using the average river distance to a prefecture’s nearest pine and bamboo habitats as an instrumental variable for historical jinshi density, I obtain stronger IV results. A doubling of jinshi density leads to more than a 33% increase in the number of top scientists and engineers and a 91.7% increase in the number of patents. Additionally, I find that investments in military equipment and telegraph construction may play crucial roles in sustaining the effects of jinshi density over time. These findings suggest that China’s recent innovation benefits from its historical institutions
