Welcome to the website of the Research Group on Human Capital of UQAM’s School of Management (ESG UQAM).
The main objective of the Research Group on Human Capital (Groupe de recherche sur le capital humain) is to contribute to the economics research on all aspects of human capital, using mainly a microeconometric approach based on survey microdata representative of the population or on administrative data. The Group’s research themes include notably education, labor and well-being, and concern above all children, youth and families. One of the priorities of the Research Group on Human Capital is to study the effects of public policies on human capital and its development broadly speaking, as well as on inequalities.
We are looking for researchers, post-docs, and PhD students interested in a one-day replication challenge. Participants will be granted co-authorship on a meta-paper combining the replications and will have the opportunity to publish their work. Participants will be matched based on field, and a study from a leading economics or political science journal will be assigned to each team based on interests.
News
“Geographic mobility and intergenerational transmission of income in Quebec”, the latest CIRANO project report from Boujija, Y. Connolly, M. and St-Denis, X.
In this study, the authors examine the contribution of geographic mobility to the intergenerational transmission of income in Quebec. The study uses data from Statistics Canada’s Intergenerational Income Mobility Database (BDMIR) to estimate the link between geographic mobility and socioeconomic mobility.
Four cohorts of young people are followed over time: those born between 1967 and 1970, between 1972 and 1975, between 1977 and 1980 and between 1982 and 1985. This represents a sample of almost 1.4 million observations.
The authors show that the deterioration of social mobility in Quebec stems mainly from two phenomena :
- a deterioration in the socioeconomic status of young people residing outside major urban centers at age 16 and having grown up in a family at the bottom of the income distribution, combined with…
2. … an improvement in the situation of young people from these same regions, but having grown up in a family at the top of the parental income distribution. This study contributes to enriching knowledge and suggests that policies supporting geographic mobility could contribute to increasing social mobility in Quebec.
Download the project report: https://cirano.qc.ca/files/publications/2023RP-11.pdf
Congratulations to Christ Kévin Bazie who joins the National Research Council !
Christ Kévin Bazie announced this week his entry into the National Research Council, which they say is the largest research and technology institution in Canada.
It is partly thanks to his presentations with the Poster-format-GRCH and his various parallel training courses in data sciences that he allowed him to access the position of data analyst with development opportunities.
“I would like to thank the GRCH again, which gave me a lot and I did not fail to mention to the NRC my membership of the GRCH with its exceptional professors” – Christ Kévin Bazie
Presentations by Nicholas Lawson and Marie Connolly at the Princeton Industrial Relations Section Centennial Symposium on June 8th, 2023 :
- 1:00-1:15 p.m.: Nicholas Lawson “Business organizations and the minimum wage”. This study shows that higher minimum wages are associated with smaller firms with fewer layers in their hierarchy, but also with higher levels of productivity.
Visit Nicholas Lawson’s website by clicking here
- 3:15-3:30: Marie Connolly “Intergenerational transmission of income among Generation 1.5 in Canada: the role of age at immigration”. In this study, the researchers attempt to understand the causal effect of age at immigration by estimating a model in which the rank of children is explained by interactions between age at arrival and the predicted mean rank. second-generation immigrants from the same region of origin, living in the same region in Canada, from the same birth cohort, taking into account the income of their parents
Find Marie Connolly’s full article by clicking here as well as her website.
The symposium will take place at Robertson Hall – the Arthur Lewis Auditorium
Presentation by Marie Connolly at the Annual Meeting of the Association of Canadian Economists.
Marie Connolly presented the paper stemming from Anne Mei Le Bourdais-Coffey’s memoir (co-written paper with Catherine Haeck) at the annual meeting of the Association of Canadian Economists.
Congratulations to Mélissa Coissard for her award!
Mélissa Coissard won the prize for the best oral communication at the Interordre conference on student research in the human and social sciences.
Congratulations to Anne-Charlotte Latour for accepting her application for the Health and Society Institute Fund Scholarship!
A fourth-year interdisciplinary doctoral student in health and society, Anne-Charlotte is particularly interested in the disciplines of health economics, microeconometrics and social epidemiology.
Her first thesis essay focuses on economic mobility and the determinants of health, education, well-being and early childhood development in Canada.
Congratulations to Lucie Raymond-Brousseau who holds the Best Master’s Thesis
With her thesis The role of universities and intergenerational social mobility in Quebec, Lucie Raymond-Brousseau, a master’s student in economics, presents a descriptive analysis of the contribution of Quebec universities to intergenerational income mobility in Quebec, under the direction of Marie Connolly and Catherine Haeck, Department of Economics.
Congratulations to Djossou Tchénagnon who holds the Best Master’s Thesis (Honourable Mention)
A master’s student in economics, Djossou Tchénagnon presents a dissertation that modifies Acemoglu’s job search model to study the impact of the temporary foreign worker program (TFWP) on the salary of natives.
Under the title, Integration of (im)migrant workers under a ban on changing employers in the country: salary impact on other employees in the affected occupations, Djossou Tchénagnon’s thesis was produced under the direction of Marie Connolly and Nicholas Lawson, Department of Economics.
Event
The 2023 replication games organized by the GRCH
In collaboration with the Institute for Replication, the Human Capital Research Group is organizing the Montreal 2023 Replication Games. The Games will take place at UQAM on June 14, 2023, from 8:30 a.m. to 4 p.m., with an option to participate in distance on Zoom. For more information on the Games, see the Institute for Replication page.
We are looking for researchers, post-docs and PhD students interested in taking part in a one-day replication challenge. Participants will become co-authors on a meta-paper combining replications and will have the opportunity to publish their work.
Participants will be matched according to their field and a study from a journal in economics or political science will be assigned to each team according to their interests.
For more information: Montreal 2023 Replicating Games
Visit of Pierre-Loup Beauregard (UBC) and Sébastien Montpetit (TSE) from May 3 to August 7 at the GRCH!
The Human Capital Research Group is pleased to announce the visit of two doctoral students this summer.
Our first guest, Pierre-Loup Beauregard is a PhD student at the Vancouver School of Economics at the University of British Columbia. His work focuses on demographic changes in occupied neighborhoods and their impacts on residents. In particular, he studies the impacts on public schools and their roles in gentrification processes.
For more information on Pierre-Loup, visit his website at the following address:https://sites.google.com/view/pierreloupbeauregard
We then present Sébastien Montpetit, an applied microeconomist in the last year of his doctorate at the Toulouse School of Economics (TSE). Her research interests focus mainly on the economic integration of minorities and women in developed countries as well as family policies. In terms of methods, he is interested in estimating theoretical models or using micro-data and cost-benefit analysis.
His most active research projects concern:
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- The impact of Quebec’s universal child care reform on social well-being. (This project will be presented on May 5 at the GRCH. NB: This paper is co-written with Pierre-Loup.)
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- Economic costs and motivations for wearing the veil among Muslim women in France.
“Having completed my Bacc in 2017 in the economics department of ESG-UQÀM, it will be a pleasure to meet my teachers there!”
Sébastien, will present himself this Friday, May 5 at 3 p.m.:
>Friday, May 5, 2023
>3:00 p.m., room DS-5650
For more information on Sébastien, visit his website at the following address: https://www.sebastienmontpetit.com/fr/
Recommendation
“A reframing is needed about the PL23 and its institute of excellence” – Martin Maltais, Hélène Lecavalier, Julien Prud’homme, Catherine Haeck and Frédéric Guay
“As researchers, our task with decision-makers is to advise elected officials by reporting soberly and with humility on the state of knowledge and its implications, argue the authors”
In this article from Le Devoir, Martin Maltais, Hélène Lecavalier, Julien Prud’homme, Catherine Haeck and Frédéric Guay report on the measures taken for the creation of the National Institute of Excellence in Education (INEE) desired by the Minister.
- The creation of the INEE in no way affects the academic freedom of scholars.
- The creation of the INEE in no way affects the mandate, powers and autonomy of the Fonds de recherche du Québec (FRQ) which finance university research.
- The researchers emphasize several important points: :
- Article 4 of the future INEE Law requires the Institute to “exercise [its] mission in accordance with the values of rigour, objectivity, transparency and cooperation with the organizations that can contribute “
- Section 8 provides for a Board of Trustees consisting of a chair separate from management, as well as the chief scientist, independent members, and the chairperson of the Council on Higher Education.
- Then, Articles 11 to 13 provide for transparency obligations and the creation of a separate scientific committee
4. The promotion of a pluralism of approaches concerning evidence and their devices
5. All professionalized sectors of activity understand that a better structured use of scientific results is a good thing.
To read on La Presse: A necessity for our teachers and our children
In this article Catherine Haeck and Pierre Fortin detail in 5 points the reasons why they are in favor of the creation of a National Institute of Excellence in Education (INEE).
- The INEE will have competent personnel at its disposal who will sort, summarize the information and disseminate it throughout Quebec. In this way, teachers will have easy access to regularly updated scientific information that will allow them to choose what is relevant for their classroom and incorporate it into their professional practice.
- In the same way as the Minister, Catherine Haeck and Pierre Fortin believe that a one-track system in education cannot succeed. Thus the role of INEE will also be to assess the multiple speeds of the current system.
- Thousands of observations have led to a double result: 1. on average, young people in Quebec succeed as well, if not better, than those in other provinces; and 2. the students who experience the most difficulty do as well at home as elsewhere and even better in certain areas. The INEE will allow us to better understand why, and to go further.
- INEE will be able to conduct small-scale experiments with children to see what works and what doesn’t before making large-scale changes.
- Our value system damages our education system by increasing the pressure on children. They are too often categorized in a pejorative way in the public space and the INEE will have to be particularly attentive to everything that affects their well-being.
*PHOTO SARAH MONGEAU-BIRKETT, LA PRESSE ARCHIVES*
Read on La Presse: The taboo of boys’ educational inequality
Using various national and international statistical data, Robert Lacroix, Catherine Haeck, Claude Montmarquette and Richard E. Tremblay explain in their latest book
The under-education of men and the choice of profession of women, (presented in the article in La Presse) the evolution and root causes of three constant phenomena in the field of education in Quebec and in the so-called industrialized countries : the university graduation of women caught up with that of men and then, against all expectations, surpassed it. Finally, despite this catch-up and this reversal of the trend, the differences in the disciplinary and professional choices of women and men have crystallized.
According to the researchers, “the subject is not under the magnifying glass because men do not seem to suffer from this gap at the moment. Their activity rate and their remuneration are even higher” but this subject still deserves our full attention. Catherine Haeck, reminds us that “we must not aim only at boys, there are of course girls in difficulty, she says, but by helping everyone, we help the boys”. To do this, the priority would be, according to the authors, above all to invest in early childhood.
Three UQÀM experts quoted in President Biden’s Economic Report!
It is in the President’s Economic Report (2023 edition) that the work of 3 UQÀM experts was cited to support a public childcare policy. This annual report of the US administration, produced by the Council of Economic Advisers, is an important vehicle for presenting the domestic and international economic policies of the White House.
Thus, the work of Catherine Hæck, Pierre Lefebvre and Philip Merrigan, professors of the Department of Economics at UQÀM is highlighted.
The first article cited is co-authored by Pierre Lefebvre and Philip Merrigan “Child Care Policy and the Labor Supply of Mothers with Young Children: A Natural Experiment from Canada” appears in Chapter 4. Through this study, the report highlights that investments in child care and early childhood education have significant positive effects on the employment rate of mothers of young children, as documented in countries such as Canada, Germany and Norway .
The second article, signed by Catherine Hæck, Pierre Lefebvre and Philip Merrigan, goes in the same direction. Published in 2015 in Labor Economics and titled “Canadian Evidence on Ten Years of Universal Preschool Policies: The Good and the Bad,” it is cited twice in the report’s Chapter 6, Supply Challenges in U.S. Labor Markets.
Professor Catherine Hæck, who was surprised to receive an email from the Council of Economic Advisers on March 21 advising her that she had been quoted in the Chairman’s Report, says she is proud to see that her work and that of his colleagues made his way to the White House. “It’s important when you know what child care costs can represent for a family and even more so for a single mother in the United States,” she says. A public subsidy policy really democratizes access to services”.
To read the article: https://actualites.uqam.ca/2023/trois-experts-de-luqam-cites-dans-le-rapport-economique-du-president-biden/?utm_source=29mars2023&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=BULLETINUQAM