13.00-15.00
KTI Szeminárium: Francesca Leombroni:
Extra-curricular internships and sorting by socio-economic status
This paper investigates whether, and due to which channels, university students from different socioeconomic backgrounds differ in their propensity to choose an internship as their access point to the labor market. After presenting evidence that individuals from wealthier backgrounds are more likely to start an extra-curricular internship, I collect novel survey data on a sample of university students to estimate a model of contract choice. In the survey, I elicit both career choices in hypothetical but realistic scenarios, and expected returns conditional on different initial contract types. I find that individuals from different socioeconomic backgrounds have a comparable structure of beliefs, but differ in their preferences for present and future labor-market outcomes.