Theme: Recessions and the Labor Market Returns to Cognitive and Social Skills

Guest Speaker: Sun Hyung Kim (Shanghai University)

Time:  June 5, 2024 (Wednesday) 10:30-11:45am

Venue: 210, Business School Building

Organizer: Department of Economics

Guest Bio:

  Sun Hyung Kim is an Associate Professor at Sydney Business School, Shanghai University. She graduated from the University of Iowa with a Ph.D. She focuses on the complex relationship between labor skills and socio-economic factors, especially the application of labor economics to education and health policies. Her papers have been published in prestigious journals such as International Economic Review and Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization.

Synopsis：

  Although recessions can negatively affect labor market outcomes, we find that individuals with higher cognitive skills have been less affected by recessions since 2000 compared to the recessions of the 1980s and 1990s. This result comes despite the fact that returns to cognitive skills have declined, on average, over the past several decades. We argue that changes in employer-paid training during the recent recession help explain the relative returns to cognitive skills due to lower training costs and higher labor productivity. Consistent with this, we find that firms provided more training to workers with higher cognitive skills in the post-2000 recession.