Three Essays on the Determinants of Labour Market Outcomes

Abstract

This thesis empirically explores the potential factors contributing to divergent labour market outcomes across individuals' career stages. Chapter 1 focuses on adolescent students and presents new evidence on the differential effects of the use of educational technology on students¿ mathematical achievement. This has implications for labour market trajectories, as achievement in mathematics is a strong predictor of future career choices. The findings provide evidence of an inverted-U-shaped relationship between ICT use at school and mathematical performance. In particular, prolonged use of ICT at school leads to a negative impact on performance, a finding that applies to a number of OECD countries. Chapter 2 examines the determinants of wage trajectories of new entrants in the labour market by using large data of the Spanish social security system. The results show that individuals in bad jobs upon labour market entry experience adverse effects in their future wages. This is mainly driven by non-employment spells, which significantly penalise wage trajectories. Chapter 3 broadens the analysis to the overall workforce and examines the drivers of occupational gender segregation through an in-house designed large-scale survey. The chapter is further supported by a second survey evaluating the causal impact of a role model intervention (randomised controlled trial) addressing adolescents¿ misconceptions about mathematics. The results show that educational presorting largely accounts for occupational gender segregation. The role model intervention shows that, by reinforcing the relevant role of mathematics, students¿ preconceived negative ideas about mathematics can be reverted