Hessel Oosterbeek

Last updated

Hessel Oosterbeek
Born (1959-03-11) March 11, 1959 (age 63)
Gouda, Netherlands
Alma mater University of Amsterdam
Scientific career
Fields Economics
Institutions SEO Economic Research
Cornell University
Stanford University
University of California, Berkeley
CESifo
Tinbergen Institute
Latin American Social Sciences Institute

Hessel Oosterbeek (born in Gouda, Netherlands, on March 11, 1959) [1] is a Dutch economist. He currently works as Professor of Economics at the University of Amsterdam. [2] In particular, Oosterbeek has conducted extensive research on the returns to schooling, the economics of training, investment contracts, and overeducation and has performed impact evaluations for various interventions in especially education. Oosterbeek ranks among the most-cited Dutch economists [3] and the world's leading education economists. [4]

Contents

Biography

A native of Gouda, Hessel Oosterbeek began working as a bookseller after finishing high school, but began studying economics in 1980 at the University of Amsterdam (UVA). Therein, he earned a MSc and a PhD in, respectively, 1985 and 1992, the latter with a thesis on human capital theory. While studying at UVA, Oosterbeek worked at several research institutions in Amsterdam, including the Foundation for Economic Research (SEO), the Center for Educational Research, and the Institute for Public Expenditures, and became an assistant professor at UVA (1988–98). After his graduation and several visiting appointments at Cornell University, Stanford University, and the University of California, Berkeley, Oosterbeek was promoted to associate professor at UVA in 1998 and to full professor in 2000. [5] Additionally, he maintains professional affiliations with CESifo, Tinbergen Institute, the Amsterdam Institute for International Development, the Max Goote Center for Vocational Education and Training, and the Latin American Social Sciences Institute (FLACSO). Moreover, he has been a member of the editorial boards of the Economics of Education Review and Effective Education . [6]

Research

Hessel Oosterbeek's research interests include the economics of education, impact evaluation, experimental economics and development economics, which he has often explored in collaborations with notably Edwin Leuven, Randolph Sloof, Bas van der Klaauw and Joep Sonnemans. His research with Dinand Webbink in De Economist on higher education enrollment in the Netherlands won the 1997 Hennipman Award. [7] According to IDEAS/RePEc, Oosterbeek belongs to the top 3% of economists registered on IDEAS as ranked by research output. [8]

Research on the economics of education

Research on overeducation

One early but persistent area of Oosterbeek's research is over-education in the Netherlands. Together with Joop Hartog, he finds that due to more higher education enrollment, undereducation in the Netherlands decreased throughout the 1960s and 1970s while overeducation increased, though the rate of return to education is positive even in cases of "overeducation", implying that overeducation doesn't necessarily imply private or social inefficiency. [9] By contrast, Oosterbeek and Hartog don't observe health, wealth or happiness among Dutch to increase linearly in education: individuals with only a non-vocational secondary school degree are generally healthier, wealthier and happier than TVET or university graduates; moreover, they find IQ to increase health, social background to increase wealth, and being a woman to increase happiness. [10] Oosterbeek's research on overeducation (and mismatch) are reviewed in his and Leuven's synthesis of those economic literatures in the Handbook of the Economics of Education. [11]

Research on the returns to education

Another early area of Oosterbeek's research concerns the returns to education. Together with Wim Groot, he finds strong support for the hypothesis that schooling enhances rather than uncovers productivity once schooling is disaggregated into effective, repeated, skipped, inefficient routing, and dropout years. [12] Moreover, Oosterbeek argues – along with Colm Harmon and Orley Ashenfelter – that estimates of the returns to education are warped by reporting bias, which they find to account for a large share of the differences in earlier estimates that were attributed to differences in the methods of estimation; correcting for the bias, they find returns to education to be particularly high in the U.S. and to have increased throughout the 1980s and 1990s. [13] In another contribution to the discussion on the sign and size of returns to education, Oosterbeek, Harmon and Ian Walker review the literature on the microeconomic returns to education and find that education unambiguously and substantially increases individuals' earnings. [14] Finally, in work with Leuven and Hans van Ophem, Oosterbeek observes that about one third of the variation in wage differentials between skill groups in developed economies are explained by differences in the net supply of skill groups, with relative demand and supply being a particularly strong determinant of relative wages of low-skilled workers. [15]

Research on the economics of training

A third area of research of Oosterbeek's research are the economics of private sector training. For the Netherlands in 1995, he finds workers' schooling, personal backgrounds, and job characteristics to determine their willingness to receive work-related training, while industry and workers' gender and age determine firms' gains from having a better trained workforce. Moreover, whereas for half of the untrained workers the expected net returns to training for the firms would be positive and those of the workers negative, for another third of untrained workers the opposite would have held true. [16] Furthermore, comparing the demand and supply of training in Canada, Switzerland, the Netherlands and the US, Oosterbeek and Leuven find that the employer is typically the provider of training and often willing to pay for general training, that international differences in training largely reflect differences in the weights of certain worker and job characteristics, and that the demand for training tends to increase in workers' education and training. [17] Analysing the impact of legislation enabling Dutch firms to claim a larger share of their expenditures on employees' training if they are aged 40 or older, they find that the training rate of workers just above the age of 40 is 15–20% higher than that of workers just below 40, with the effect mainly reflecting the postponement of earlier training needs and having no significant effect on workers' wages. [18] However, using an estimation method in which they narrow down the comparison group to workers who wanted private-sector training but were unable to participate because of random events, Oosterbeek and Leuven observe only much smaller, statistically insignificant returns to training. [19]

Other research on the economics of education

Further topics in the economics of education wherein Oosterbeek has performed important research include the impacts of extra funding for IT on disadvantaged pupils' school achievement, of financial rewards for students, of entrepreneurship education, student exchanges, class size, and differences in gender-specific competitiveness. In particular, he finds that extra funding for personnel or computers and software targeted at primary schools with large populations of disadvantaged students significantly decrease student achievement, with extra funding for IT being particularly detrimental for girls (with Leuven, Webbink and Mikael Lindahl). [20] By contrast, he finds that smaller classes in the last three years of primary school in Sweden substantially increase cognitive and noncognitive ability at age 13, school achievement at age 16, and wages, earnings, and education completion throughout ages 27 to 42 (with Per Fredriksson and Björn Öckert). [21] Regarding secondary school, he finds gender-specific differences in competitiveness among Dutch high school students to explain about a fifth of gender differences in the choice of academic tracks, wherein boys tend to choose substantially more prestigious and thus more math- and science-intensive tracks than girls, as they tend to be more competitive (with Thomas Buser and Muriel Niederle). [22] Finally, with regard to university, he finds studying abroad and studying abroad longer to increase the probability of erstwhile exchange students living abroad among Dutch students (with Webbink); [23] the offer of financial rewards for Dutch university freshmen who pass all required first-year subjects to increase only the achievement of high-ability students while decreasing that of low-ability students and the effects to worsen over time, possibly due to the erosion of intrinsic motivation by the extrinsic reward (with Leuven and van der Klaauw); [24] and a major Dutch entrepreneurship education programme to have no impact on college students' self-assessed entrepreneurship skills and to in fact decrease their entrepreneurial intentions. [25]

Research on public-private wage differentials, ultimatum games and gender diversity

Lastly, Oosterbeek has also conducted miscellaneous research on topics such as public-private wage differentials, ultimatum games and gender diversity:

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Labour economics</span> Study of the markets for wage labour

Labour economics, or labor economics, seeks to understand the functioning and dynamics of the markets for wage labour. Labour is a commodity that is supplied by labourers, usually in exchange for a wage paid by demanding firms. Because these labourers exist as parts of a social, institutional, or political system, labour economics must also account for social, cultural and political variables.

A minimum wage is the lowest remuneration that employers can legally pay their employees—the price floor below which employees may not sell their labor. Most countries had introduced minimum wage legislation by the end of the 20th century. Because minimum wages increase the cost of labor, companies often try to avoid minimum wage laws by using gig workers, by moving labor to locations with lower or nonexistent minimum wages, or by automating job functions.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Feminist economics</span> Gender-aware branch of economics

Feminist economics is the critical study of economics and economies, with a focus on gender-aware and inclusive economic inquiry and policy analysis. Feminist economic researchers include academics, activists, policy theorists, and practitioners. Much feminist economic research focuses on topics that have been neglected in the field, such as care work, intimate partner violence, or on economic theories which could be improved through better incorporation of gendered effects and interactions, such as between paid and unpaid sectors of economies. Other feminist scholars have engaged in new forms of data collection and measurement such as the Gender Empowerment Measure (GEM), and more gender-aware theories such as the capabilities approach. Feminist economics is oriented towards the goal of "enhancing the well-being of children, women, and men in local, national, and transnational communities."

Offshoring is the relocation of a business process from one country to another—typically an operational process, such as manufacturing, or supporting processes, such as accounting. Usually this refers to a company business, although state governments may also employ offshoring. More recently, technical and administrative services have been offshored.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Jacob Mincer</span> American economist

Jacob Mincer, was a father of modern labor economics. He was Joseph L. Buttenwieser Professor of Economics and Social Relations at Columbia University for most of his active life.

Employment discrimination is a form of illegal discrimination in the workplace based on legally protected characteristics. In the U.S., federal anti-discrimination law prohibits discrimination by employers against employees based on age, race, gender, sex, religion, national origin, and physical or mental disability. State and local laws often protect additional characteristics such as marital status, veteran status and caregiver/familial status. Earnings differentials or occupational differentiation—where differences in pay come from differences in qualifications or responsibilities—should not be confused with employment discrimination. Discrimination can be intended and involve disparate treatment of a group or be unintended, yet create disparate impact for a group.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Gender pay gap in the United States</span> Overview of the gender pay gap in the United States of America

The gender pay gap in the United States is a measure between the earnings of male and females in the workforce. When calculating the pay gap, non-adjusted versus adjusted pay gap is utilized. The adjusted pay gap takes into consideration the differences in hours worked, occupations chosen, education and job experience, whereas the non-adjusted pay gap is the overall difference of gross hourly earnings of males and females in the United States. The non-adjusted average female annual salary is around 80% of the average male salary, compared to 95% for the adjusted average salary.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Immigration</span> Movement of people into another country or region to which they are not native

Immigration is the international movement of people to a destination country of which they are not natives or where they do not possess citizenship in order to settle as permanent residents or naturalized citizens. Commuters, tourists, and other short-term stays in a destination country do not fall under the definition of immigration or migration; seasonal labour immigration is sometimes included, however.

The economic results of migration impact the economies of both the sending and receiving countries.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Joshua Angrist</span> Israeli American economist

Joshua David Angrist is an Israeli-American economist and Ford Professor of Economics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Angrist, together with Guido Imbens, was awarded the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economics in 2021 "for their methodological contributions to the analysis of causal relationships".

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Heidi Hartmann</span> Feminist economist

Heidi I. Hartmann is an American feminist economist who is founder and president of the Washington-based Institute for Women's Policy Research (IWPR), a research organization created to conduct women-centered, public policy research. She is an expert on the intersection of women, economics and public policy. Dr. Hartmann is also a Research Professor at George Washington University and the editor of the Journal of Women, Politics & Policy.

Economics of participation is an umbrella term spanning the economic analysis of worker cooperatives, labor-managed firms, profit sharing, gain sharing, employee ownership, employee stock ownership plans, works councils, codetermination, and other mechanisms which employees use to participate in their firm's decision making and financial results.

Marianne Bertrand is a Belgian economist who currently works as Chris P. Dialynas Professor of Economics at the University of Chicago's Booth School of Business. Bertrand belongs to the world's most prominent labour economists in terms of research, which has been awarded the 2004 Elaine Bennett Research Prize and the 2012 Sherwin Rosen Prize for Outstanding Contributions in the Field of Labor Economics.She is a research fellow of the National Bureau of Economic Research, and the IZA Institute of Labor Economics.

Joyce Penelope Jacobsen is a former President of Hobart and William Smith Colleges. Dr. Jacobsen was elected as the 29th President of Hobart College and the 18th President of William Smith College. Jacobsen is a scholar of economics, an award-winning teacher and an experienced administrator. She began her presidency on July 1, 2019. She is the first woman to serve as president of Hobart and William Smith Colleges.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Joop Hartog</span> Dutch economist (born 1946)

"Joop" (Joost) Hartog is a Dutch economist and an Emeritus Professor of Economics at the University of Amsterdam. He ranks among the most important Dutch labour economists and was elected to be a member of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences (2001) and the Royal Holland Society of Sciences and Humanities. The Joop Hartog Dissertation Prize, a bi-annual prize for the best Ph.D. thesis defended at the University of Amsterdam's Faculty of Economics and Business, is named after Hartog.

Edwin Leuven is a Dutch economist and Professor of Economics at the University of Oslo. He is one of the leading European education economists, with a focus on the economics of training.

Deborah A. Cobb-Clark is an Australian economist. She is currently working as a Professor in the University of Sydney and as a Chief Investigator in the ARC Centre of Excellence for Children and Families over the Life Course. She has also worked in Bonn, Germany at the Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA) since 2000, where she holds the position of director of the Program in Gender and Families.

Lorraine Margaret Dearden is an Australo-British economist and professor of economics and social statistics at the Department of Social Science of the Institute of Education, University College London. Her research focuses on the economics of education.

Barbara Sianesi is an Italian economist currently a senior research economist at the Institute for Fiscal Studies in London. She obtained her PhD from University College London and a BA in economics from Bocconi University.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Andries de Grip</span> Economist (Maastricht University)

Andries de Grip is a Dutch economist, academic, and author. He is a Professor of Economics at the Research Centre for Education and the Labour Market (ROA), School of Business and Economics (SBE), Maastricht University and has been Director of ROA from 2013 to 2020.

References

  1. ↑ Curriculum vitae of Hessel Oosterbeek from the website of FLASCO. Retrieved January 2, 2019.
  2. ↑ Faculty profile of Hessel Oosterbeek on the website of the University of Amsterdam. Retrieved January 2, 2019.
  3. ↑ Ranking of Dutch economists registered on IDEAS/RePEc. Retrieved January 2, 2019.
  4. ↑ Ranking of education economists registered on IDEAS/RePEc. Retrieved January 2, 2019.
  5. ↑ Curriculum vitae of Hessel Oosterbeek from the website of FLASCO. Retrieved January 2, 2019.
  6. ↑ Curriculum vitae of Hessel Oosterbeek from his personal website (status: January 2018). Retrieved January 2, 2019.
  7. ↑ Curriculum vitae of Hessel Oosterbeek from the website of FLASCO. Retrieved January 2, 2019.
  8. ↑ Ranking of economists on IDEAS/RePEc. Retrieved January 2, 2019.
  9. ↑ Hartog, J.; Oosterbeek, H. (1988). "Education, allocation and earnings in the Netherlands: Overschooling?". Economics of Education Review . 7 (2): 185–194. doi:10.1016/0272-7757(88)90043-X. ISSN   0272-7757. OCLC   818862416.
  10. ↑ Hartog, J.; Oosterbeek, H. (1998). "Health, wealth and happiness: Why pursue a higher education?". Economics of Education Review. 17 (3): 245–256. CiteSeerX   10.1.1.198.6764 . doi:10.1016/S0272-7757(97)00064-2.
  11. ↑ Leuven, E.; Oosterbeek, H. (2011). Hanushek, E.A.; Machin, S.; Wößmann, L. (eds.). Overeducation and mismatch in the labor market (PDF). Handbook of the Economics of Education. Vol. 4. Amsterdam. pp. 283–326. doi:10.1016/B978-0-444-53444-6.00003-1. hdl:10419/51653. ISBN   9780444534446. S2CID   55445932. SSRN   1771245.
  12. ↑ Groot, W.; Oosterbeek, H (1994). "Earnings Effects of Different Components of Schooling: Human Capital versus Screening". Review of Economics and Statistics . 76 (2): 317–321. doi:10.2307/2109885. JSTOR   2109885.
  13. ↑ Ashenfelter, O.; Harmon, C.; Oosterbeek, H. (1999). "A review of estimates of the schooling/earnings relationship, with tests for publication bias". Labour Economics . 6 (4): 453–470. doi:10.1016/S0927-5371(99)00041-X. ISSN   0927-5371. OCLC   639064435.
  14. ↑ Harmon, C.; Oosterbeek, H.; Walker, I. (2003). "The returns to education: Microeconomics". Journal of Economic Surveys . 17 (2): 115–156. doi:10.1111/1467-6419.00191. ISSN   1467-6419. OCLC   231851794. S2CID   55485385. SSRN   416648.
  15. ↑ Leuven, E.; Oosterbeek, H.; Van Ophem, H. (2004). "Explaining international differences in male skill wage differentials by differences in demand and supply of skill". Economic Journal . 114 (495): 466–486. doi:10.1111/j.1468-0297.2004.00217.x. ISSN   1468-0297. JSTOR   3590104. OCLC   1066891226. S2CID   73723378. SSRN   265188.
  16. ↑ Oosterbeek, H. (1998). "Unravelling supply and demand factors in work-related training". Oxford Economic Papers . 50 (2): 266–283. doi:10.1093/oxfordjournals.oep.a028645. JSTOR   3488734.
  17. ↑ Leuven, E.; Oosterbeek, H. (2000) [1990]. The demand and supply of work-related training: Evidence from four countries. Research in Labor Economics . Vol. 18. Emerald Group Publishing Limited. pp. 303–330. CiteSeerX   10.1.1.483.3590 . doi:10.1016/S0147-9121(99)18026-9. ISBN   978-0-7623-0584-1. ISSN   0147-9121. OCLC   477327402.
  18. ↑ Leuven, E.; Oosterbeek, H. (2004) [2000]. "Evaluating the effect of tax deductions on training". Journal of Labor Economics . 22 (2): 461–488. doi:10.1086/381257. ISSN   0734-306X. JSTOR   381257. OCLC   605915677. S2CID   10364758. SSRN   246470.
  19. ↑ Leuven, E.; Oosterbeek, H. (2008). "An alternative approach to estimate the wage returns to private-sector training". Journal of Applied Econometrics . 23 (4): 423–434. doi:10.1002/jae.1005.
  20. ↑ Leuven, E.; Lindahl, Mikael; Oosterbeek, Hessel; Webbink, Dinand (2007). "The effect of extra funding for disadvantaged pupils on achievement" (PDF). Review of Economics and Statistics. 89 (4): 721–736. doi:10.1162/rest.89.4.721. S2CID   13566219. SSRN   542462.
  21. ↑ Fredriksson, P.; Öckert, B.; Ooosterbeek, H. (2012). "Long-term effects of class size" (PDF). Quarterly Journal of Economics . 128 (1): 249–285. doi:10.1093/qje/qjs048. S2CID   21570799.
  22. ↑ Buser, T.; Niederle, M.; Oosterbeek, H. (2014) [2012]. "Gender, competitiveness, and career choices". Quarterly Journal of Economics . 129 (3): 1409–1447. CiteSeerX   10.1.1.353.7973 . doi:10.1093/qje/qju009. S2CID   2118141.
  23. ↑ Oosterbeek, H.; Webbink, D. (2011). "Does studying abroad induce a brain drain?". Economica . 78 (310): 347–366. CiteSeerX   10.1.1.523.4654 . doi:10.1111/j.1468-0335.2009.00818.x. ISSN   1468-0335. OCLC   67183111. S2CID   30755769.
  24. ↑ Leuven, E.; Oosterbeek, H.; Van der Klaauw, B. (2010). "The effect of financial rewards on students' achievement: Evidence from a randomized experiment" (PDF). Journal of the European Economic Association . 8 (6): 1243–1265. doi:10.1111/j.1542-4774.2010.tb00554.x. ISSN   1542-4774. OCLC   969745054.
  25. ↑ Oosterbeek, H.; Van Praag, M.; Ijsselstein, A. (2010). "The impact of entrepreneurship education on entrepreneurship skills and motivation". European Economic Review . 54 (3): 442–454. doi:10.1016/j.euroecorev.2009.08.002. S2CID   11391574.
  26. ↑ Hartog, J.; Oosterbeek, H. (1993). "Public and private sector wages in the Netherlands" (PDF). European Economic Review . 37 (1): 97–114. CiteSeerX   10.1.1.505.8168 . doi:10.1016/0014-2921(93)90072-I. ISSN   0014-2921. OCLC   224614716.
  27. ↑ Oosterbeek, H.; Sloof, R.; Van De Kuilen, G. (2004) [2001]. "Cultural differences in ultimatum game experiments: Evidence from a meta-analysis". Experimental Economics . 7 (2): 171–188. doi:10.1023/b:exec.0000026978.14316.74. S2CID   17659329. SSRN   286428.
  28. ↑ Hoogendoorn, S.; Oosterbeek, H.; Van Praag, M. (2013) [2011]. "The impact of gender diversity on the performance of business teams: Evidence from a field experiment" (PDF). Management Science . 59 (7): 1514–1528. doi:10.1287/mnsc.1120.1674. ISSN   0025-1909. OCLC   829718561. SSRN   1826024.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.