Eunseo Kang

Biography

Eunseo Kang is a PhD candidate in the Department of Economics at UC Santa Barbara. She graduated from Yonsei University in Seoul, Korea, with a BA in Economics. She is also pursuing an MA degree in the Statistics department with a specialization in Data Science. She has diverse work experience, including an internship as an Amazon Economist, where she analyzed large employee data. Before coming to UCSB, she worked in the fixed assets investment department at NH Life Insurance in Seoul, Korea.

Research

Eunseo Kang's research interests include Labor Economics and the Economics of Education. She is currently working on a project regarding the impact of relative age on students' academic achievement in developing countries. Her other project, a joint work with Kelly Bedard, examines how gender and socioeconomic achievement gaps have changed in the developed world over the past 20 years.

Job Market Paper Abstract

"Relative Age Effects on Educational Outcomes: International Evidence from the Developing World"

Students with different birthdays who are subject to the same school-entry cutoff date have different ages at school entry. This difference in maturity may affect a child’s outcomes in school because we might expect that students who are more mature relative to their peers will perform better; a phenomenon called `relative age effects’. While the focus of previous studies has been limited to developed countries, this study aims to provide evidence of relative age effects in the context of developing countries. Using Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study data and assigned relative age as an instrumental variable that is formed exogenously by this cutoff, I find that positive relative age effects on test scores exist in developing countries, but they are smaller than those in developed countries. I also explore the educational factors correlated to the magnitude of relative age effects using cross-country data.