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  • Seminar,

David de la Croix (UCLouvain)

Published on October 4, 2021 – Updated on October 14, 2021
Date
Le 11 October 2021 De 12:30 à 14:00
Location
Pôle Tertiaire - Site La Rotonde - 26 avenue Léon Blum - 63000 Clermont-Ferrand
Room 214. A Health Pass will be required.

Research seminar. Nepotism vs. Intergenerational Transmission of Human Capital in Academia (1088–1800)

Nepotism vs. Intergenerational Transmission of Human Capital in Academia (1088–1800)

Abstract

We build a database of families of scholars, measure their publications, and develop a general method to disentangle two determinants of occupational persistence: nepotism vs. inherited human capital. This requires jointly addressing measurement error in human capital and selection from nepotism. Exploiting multi-generation correlations and parent-child distributional differences, we identify the structural parameters of a Markov process of intergenerational transmission with nepotism. The human capital elasticity is lower than in standard multi-generation estimates ignoring nepotism. Nepotism was lower in science vs. law, in Protestant institutions, and declined during the Scientific Revolution and the Enlightenment—testifying to the rise of meritocracy.

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