Research

Working papers

An Industry-Level Measure of Quality-Adjusted Human Capital in the European Union

With Juan Durán Vanegas and Iulia Siedschlag. ESRI Working Paper No. 812, October 2025.
[Paper] [Policy brief]

Industry-level measures of human capital typically capture the quantity of education but not its quality. This paper constructs a quality-adjusted human capital (QAHC) measure for 19 industries across 21 European Union countries and the United Kingdom from 2010 to 2021, combining student and adult test scores and mean years of schooling across age cohorts with the age composition of industry workforces. The estimated elasticity of adult skills with respect to education quality is more than three times that with respect to years of schooling, and these estimates provide the weights used to construct QAHC. We evaluate the measure using two complementary frameworks. In a Stochastic Frontier model, the estimated output elasticity of human capital ranges from 0.36% to 0.44%, consistent with previous macroeconomic estimates. In regressions of labour-productivity growth alongside tangible and intangible capital, QAHC is the only human-capital measure with a statistically significant positive association, concentrated in goods-producing industries. Conventional education-attainment shares do not capture a comparable productivity link, highlighting the importance of incorporating education quality into industry-level measures of human capital.

Theses

Behavioural Responses to Targeted Housing Subsidies: Evidence from Ireland’s Help to Buy Scheme

MRes thesis, Sciences Po, May 2026. Supervisor: Antoine Ferey.

This thesis studies how a targeted housing subsidy affects behaviour at an eligibility cut-off and participation within the subsidised market. I examine Ireland’s Help to Buy scheme, which subsidises first-time buyers of new-build dwellings valued at or below €500,000. Using property sales and household purchase records, I combine a model of developers’ responses with bunching and difference-in-differences designs. I find excess mass just below €500,000 in the new-build market, but not before the policy or among second-hand transactions, alongside a substantial shift of first-time buyers towards new-builds. When the scheme became more generous in 2020, bunching increased by 55%, closely matching the 50% increase in the maximum relief available at the cut-off. The reallocation of first-time buyers towards new-builds roughly doubled, in line with the doubling of the headline subsidy rate. Each margin therefore responds almost proportionally to a different dimension of policy generosity. The threshold and participation margins are linked through the eligible share of demand in the new-build market. Under universal coverage, all demand is exposed to losing eligibility at the cut-off; under targeted coverage, only the eligible share is exposed, and that share varies with buyer participation. More generous subsidies therefore strengthen the threshold response through both the value of eligibility and the share of demand exposed.

The Impact of Light Rail Transit Extensions on Residential Property Prices: Evidence from Dublin’s Luas Cross City Project

Undergraduate thesis, Trinity College Dublin, April 2024. Supervisor: Ronan Lyons.
[Thesis]

This dissertation examines how the 2017 Luas Cross City extension affected residential property prices in Dublin’s historically less-affluent North Inner City. Using geocoded property listings, I combine hedonic and difference-in-differences models with an instrumental-variables design that uses a historical rail route to address the non-random placement of Luas stops. Across the three approaches, proximity to the extension is associated with higher property prices, but the effects vary with distance. The instrumental-variables estimates identify a 13.1% premium for properties between 400 and 800 metres from a stop, with no statistically significant effect at shorter or longer distances. This pattern is consistent with a “Goldilocks zone” that balances improved accessibility against the possible disamenities of close proximity. The dissertation provides the first causal analysis of the Cross City extension’s property-price effects in the North Inner City.