Sonja Kovacevic

Sonja Kovacevic

PhD candidate in Economics

University of Oslo

Welcome!

I am a PhD candidate in Economics at the University of Oslo. This fall, I will join the University of Cologne as an Assistant Professor in Applied Microeconomics. During the summer, I will research at the Frisch Centre as a Postdoctoral Fellow.

I am broadly interested in policy relevant topics in applied microeconomics. My primary research interests are at the intersection of economics of education and public policy, with a secondary interest in behavioral economics.

Interests

  • Primary: applied microeconomics with a focus on economics of education and public policy
  • Secondary: behavioral economics

Education

  • PhD in Economics, 2024 (Expected)

    University of Oslo

  • Research Master in Political Economy, 2016

    University of Essex

  • BA in Political Science, 2014

    University of Bremen

Working Papers

It’s all about what you learn. Isolating the human capital component in the returns to higher education

Returns to higher education can reflect either an increase in human capital or job market signalling. In this paper, I isolate the human capital resulting from higher education, capitalizing on a distinctive feature of Norway’s implementation of the Bologna reform. Students who enrolled in 1999 inadvertently acquired more human capital compared to those who enrolled in 2000, despite earning identical degrees. This anomaly, two sets of graduates with identical degrees, of which one has more education, allows me to answer a key question concerning investment in higher education. How much does an increase in human capital increase an individuals’ earnings, in the absence of self-selection and signalling? I use rich longitudinal register data to estimate returns to university-acquired human capital. 15-20 years after first enrolling, receiving reform-induced human capital leads to gaining 1.5 percentile ranks in the earnings distribution. While I can rule out negative effects, the precision of the estimates does not allow me to distinguish between moderate and large effects. Using a novel 3-step cross-fit test-and-select estimator exploiting first-stage heterogeneity reduces standard errors by 16%. Human capital increases long-run earnings potential even when employers cannot observe it directly, but signalling matters when first entering the labor market.

Teaching

Lectures

ECON3810: Incentives and Motivation (Behavioral economics) Spring 2020, 2021 and 2023

Seminars

ECON1910: Poverty and distribution in developing countries

Spring 2020 and 2021

ECON2310: Statistics 1

Spring 2018

Contact