The role of consumer identity in access-based consumption
On 15 May 2024 Katrine Berg Nødtvedt will hold a trial lecture on a prescribed topic and defend her thesis for the PhD degree at NHH.
Watch out for NHH's new rising star
Meet Eppie Jean Van Egeraat, a young PhD scholar from Ireland who has already earned two published papers—a rising star, her NHH colleagues say.
Since joining the doctoral program at NHH in August 2022, Eppie Jean Van Egeraat has proven herself to be a remarkably productive PhD student.
She has published two papers on the impact of COVID-19 on high school students. Currently, Van Egeraat is collaborating on a study on a Norwegian pension reform with her colleague, PhD student Qquillaccori García López, as well as working on a project concerning female CEOs in partnership with Professor Astrid Kunze.
Van Egeraat became a PhD student in August 2022, through Kunze's research project EquiFirm.
The Norwegian FRILUFTSLIV
The researcher now based in Bergen does not limit her activities to the confines of her office.
`I love the Norwegian friluftsliv, and the weather in Bergen suits me better than in Dublin! ´, says Van Egeraat.
Only four years ago, in 2020, she finished her bachelor’s degree at University College Dublin.
Papers
- Neglecting students’ socio-emotional skills magnified learning losses during the pandemic | npj Science of Learning (nature.com) (2022)
- Behavioral Nudges Reduced Dropout Risk among Vulnerable Students during the Pandemic: Experimental Evidence from Brazil (AEA Papers and Proceedings 2023)
- Both papers are based on a study including 18, 256 students in 87 high school in Goiás, Brazil. Written by Guilherme Lichand, Julien Christen, and Eppie Van Egeraat
`Then Covid-19 hit, and the country went into lockdown. I thought that the idea of studying remote working was an interesting project for my master thesis, especially the implications for gender equality. For research, the pandemic was interesting´.
During lock down, Van Egeraat did her master’s degree at University College Dublin before moving to the University of Zurich where she worked for one year as a research associate. After Zurich, she wanted more than to get out of the house. She decided to travel to Asia and was away for three months before moving to Bergen to start her PhD at NHH.
Motivation – and grit
The two papers she has published since then delve deeply into the consequences of Covid, but now she shifted her research to students in high school. She wanted to find out how to help students when schools were shut down, a study which resulted in two papers.
Further, the researchers wanted to encourage students to stay engaged, reduce learning losses and increase the likelihood of coming back to school after Covid. The papers are based on a study involving 18,256 high-school students across 87 schools in Goiás, Brazil. The intervention included sending behavioral nudges via text messages to students or their caregivers to enhance socio-emotional skills during remote learning.
Organizes a workshop on gender gaps in the labour market
In the end of June, Professor Astrid Kunze organizes a two-day international workshop on gender inequalities and challenges to shaping an inclusive work-life.
Scalable and cheap system
The researchers found that these nudges significantly increased students' standardized test scores in math and Portuguese.
`The results indicate that skills like self-regulation, motivation, and grit play a crucial role in students' academic success, especially under non-traditional learning conditions such as those imposed by the pandemic´, Van Egeraat says.
In addition, they found that the nudges were particularly effective for students at higher risk of dropping out, such as those with lower academic performance.
`Would you recommend a system of SMS nudging if schools must shut down? ´
`It depends on several factors, and it is quite country specific, but a system like this is easy to scale and cheap to implement´, she says.
Pension reform 1992
Van Egeraat and Qquillaccori García López share an office at the Department of Economics, both interested in labour economics and gender differences.
They are doing a study on the pension reform implemented in Norway in 1992. The policy was intended to compensate carers for lower pension accrual due to child care responsibilities and credited pension points equivalent to those earned on a median income to parents (usually mothers) with young children earning below this amount.
Essays on Shareholders Engagement and Voting
On Tuesday 7 May 2024 Xuan Li will hold a trial lecture on a prescribed topic and defend her thesis for the PhD degree at NHH.
`What we are worried about, is that although the idea was to close the gender pension gap at old age, because women are now being paid (in the future) to look after their children, it may have negative incentives for current labor supply. In exacerbating the gender gap in participation and pay in child rearing years, and thus the ability to accrue pension benefits into the future, the reform may in fact have the opposite effect, widening the gender pension gap further still´, she states.
The impact on gender equality is therefore ambiguous, according to the NHH PhD student. By potentially reducing mothers' labor supply incentives and supporting traditional divisions of paid and unpaid work, the system might not fully align with goals to promote gender equality in the distribution of labor.