Myra Mohnen
Placement Officer: Andrew Chesher
Graduate Coordination: Daniella Harper
andrew.chesher@ucl.ac.uk
economics.jobmarket@ucl.ac.uk
Personal Information
Date of birth: 16th April 1984
Nationalities: US, Canadian, Belgian
Contact Details
University College London
Department of Economics
Gower Street, London, UK
WC1E 6BT
Email:
Homepage:
myra.mohnen.09@ucl.ac.uk
www.sites.google.com/site/myramohnen/
Education
since 2010
2009-2010
2008-2009
2007-2008
Ph.D. in Economics (expected June 2016), University College London
MPhil in Economics, University College London
Mandarin Studies, Beijing Normal University
M.A. in Economics, Catholic University of Louvain (with distinction)
Research Fields
Labour Economics, Innovation, Applied Microeconomics
Research Experience
since 2012: Grantham Research Institute, LSE. Research assistant
Teaching Experience
2011-2012: Development Economics, MSc, UCL
2011-2012: Economics of Public Sector, BSc, UCL
2010-2011: Economics of Law, BSc, UCL
2010-2011: Microeconometrics, Panel Data, Survival Analysis,
Statistical Graphics, Cemmap Courses, UCL
Myra Mohnen
Research
Brokers and Superstars: Peer Effects in Medical Science [Job Market Paper]
This paper empirically investigates the importance of network position for the productivity of scientists. Specifically, I examine the role played by coauthors who act as “bridges”
between scientists and thereby provide critical access to network components. I propose a
pair–specific measure, called brokerage, based on the share of links offered by a coauthor
that would otherwise remain unreachable. Using individual level panel data for medical scientists covering 19 million publications between 1965 and 2013, I construct the coauthorship
network. To deal with sorting into coauthorships, I exploit sudden and unexpected deaths
of coauthors as a natural experiment which exogenously breaks network links and changes
the structure of the network. My results reveal heterogeneous peer effects: the greater the
degree of brokerage, the greater the decrease in output after his death. Results support the
hypothesis that access to non-redundant specialised knowledge embodied in scientists plays
a crucial role in scientific production.
Nation-Building Through Compulsory Schooling During the Age of Mass Migration with Imran Rasul (UCL), Oriana Bandiera (LSE) and Martina Viarengo (Graduate
Institute, Geneva)
By the mid-19th century, America was the best educated nation on Earth: significant
financial investments in education were being undertaken and the majority of children
voluntarily attended public schools. So why did US states start introducing compulsory
schooling laws at this point in time? We provide qualitative and quantitative evidence
that compulsory schooling laws were used as a nation-building tool to homogenize the civic
values held by the tens of millions of culturally diverse migrants who moved to America
during the “Age of Mass Migration”. Our central finding is that the adoption of compulsory
schooling by American- born median voters occurs significantly earlier in time in states that
host many migrants who had lower exposure to civic values in their home countries and had
lower demand for common schooling when in the US. By providing micro-foundations for
such laws, our study highlights an important link between mass migration and institutional
change, where changes are driven by the policy choices of native median-voters in the
receiving country rather than migrant settlers themselves.
Knowledge Spillovers from Clean and Dirty Technologies: A Patent Citation
Analysis with Antoine Dechezlepretre (LSE) and Ralf Martin (Imperial College)
How much should governments subsidize the development of new clean technologies? We
use patent citation data to investigate the relative intensity of knowledge spillovers in clean
and dirty technologies in four technological fields: energy production, auto- mobiles, fuel
and lighting. We find that clean patents receive on average 43% more citations than dirty
patents. Clean patents are also cited by more prominent patents. These results hold for
all four technological areas. Two factors are shown to explain the clean superiority: clean
technologies have more general applications, and they are radically new compared to more
incremental dirty innovation. Knowledge spillovers from clean technologies are comparable
in scale to those observed in the IT sector. Our results mean that stronger public support
for clean R&D is warranted. They also suggest that green policies might be able to boost
economic growth.
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Myra Mohnen
Occupational Choice and Social Interaction: A Study of Victorian London
with Jose Alberto Guerra (Universidad del Rosario)
This paper presents a multinomial choice model with social interactions and asymmetric
influence. Individuals form rational expectation of peers’ occupational choice by taking into
account their characteristics and the strength of their ties. The effect from group members’
expected behaviour, from peers’ characteristics and from group unobservables are separately
identified. We provide an empirical application to nineteenth century London and explore
the importance of social networks in determining occupational choice. As ecclesiastical
parishes were at the heart of social identity, groups are delimited by their boundaries.
Using a novel dataset that pins residential locations down to the street level, we measure
the strength of ties between members of a group based on geographical proximity. The
unique two-tier administration which attributed the public good provision responsibility to
a grouping of parishes allow us to mitigate the self-selection bias. Our results show that
social networks were important in determining occupational choice. We find significant and
positive effects for individuals unemployed and in industrial occupations, while a significant
and negative effect for commercial occupations. Social interactions do not seem to matter
for domestic and professional occupations.
Ongoing projects
The impact of knowledge spillovers from clean and dirty technologies on firms’
productivity with Antoine Dechezlepretre (LSE) and Ralf Martin (Imperial College)
Social Interactions and Intergenerational Mobility with Jose-Alberto Guerra (Universidad del Rosario)
Policy papers
Evidence on Behavioural Change with Imran Rasul (UCL) prepared for and presented
to the House of Lords Science and Technology Committee, October/November 2010.
Policy brief: Clean innovation and growth with Antoine Dechezlepretre (LSE) and
Ralf Martin (Imperial College), 2014
The competitiveness effects of the European Union Emissions Trading System
with Raphael Calel (Berkeley and LSE), Antoine Dechezlepretre (LSE), and Frank Venmans
(University Mons)
Professional Activities
Refereeing : Economic Journal
Conferences & Seminar presentations: 2015 European Winter Meeting of the Econometric
Society, Milan; 2013 EEA/ESEM Congress, Gothenburg; 2013 SPRU Sussex; 2013
AERE Summer Conference, Canada
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Myra Mohnen
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Awards and Scholarships
Sino–Belgian Academic Scholarship, Chinese Ministry of Education, 2008
Outstanding Teaching Assistant Award, UCL 2011, 2012
Others
Language: French and English (Native); Spanish (Fluent); Mandarin (Intermediate)
References
Professor Uta Schoenberg
Department of Economics
University College London
Gower Street, London, UK
WC1E 6BT
u.schoenberg@ucl.ac.uk
Professor Imran Rasul
Department of Economics
University College London
Gower Street, London, UK
WC1E 6BT
i.rasul@ucl.ac.uk
Dr. Antoine Dechezlepretre
Grantham Research Institute
London School of Economics
Houghton Street, London, UK
WC2A 2AE
a.dechezlepretre@lse.ac.uk
Last updated: November 3, 2015