Dear colleagues, The Department of Economics cordially invites you to the WU Economics Research Seminar on Wednesday, October 12th, with David de la Croix (UCLouvain) on "Nepotism vs. Intergenerational Transmission of Human Capital in Academia (1088-1800)" Abstract: We build a comprehensive database of father-son pairs in academia, 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. Date: Wednesday, October 12th Time: 4.30 to 6 pm (CET) Location: building D4, ground floor, room D4.0.133 With best regards, Harald Oberhofer --- Univ.-Prof. Dr. Harald Oberhofer Department of Economics WU Vienna University of Economics and Business Phone: +43/1/31336-4984 Fax: +43/1/31336-4984 Email: harald.oberhofer@wu.ac.at<mailto:harald.oberhofer@wu.ac.at> Webpage: https://www.wu.ac.at/ie/mitarbeiter/harald-oberhofer/ Austrian Institute of Economic Research (WIFO) Phone: +43/1/7982601-468 Fax: +43/1/7989386 Email: harald.oberhofer@wifo.ac.at<mailto:harald.oberhofer@wifo.ac.at> Webpage: http://www.wifo.ac.at/harald_oberhofer