About me
I am a Postdoctoral Research Economist in the Centre for Economic Performance at the LSE. I received my Ph.D. in Economics in Nov. 2023 from Sciences Po Paris. I am an applied microeconomist, working on issues related to intergenerational mobility and educational inequalities.
Job market paper
Older Schoolmate Spillovers on Higher Education Choices (with Nagui Bechichi)
A key decision students face is where to apply to higher education. The importance of this decision is exacerbated by the vast differences in returns to higher education across majors and institutions. This paper examines a previously overlooked factor shaping this choice: the high school environment. Specifically, we analyze how students' applications and enrollments are influenced by the higher education trajectory of recent graduates from their high school. Exploiting random admission cutoffs in France's centralized admission system, we compare high schools where older schoolmates were marginally admitted versus rejected from a given degree (subject-institution combination). Our findings reveal significant older schoolmate spillovers: students are 6 percentage points (+19%) more likely to apply to and 2 percentage points (+45%) more likely to enroll in the same degree as a marginally enrolled older schoolmate. These effects are large, corresponding to roughly 45% of spillovers across siblings estimated in other countries. We find that both teacher influence and homophily/role model effects mediate these cross-cohort spillovers. Lastly, we quantify the extent to which differences in exposure to high-achieving older schoolmates between low and high SES students affects the gap in applications to very selective degrees. We find that equalizing this exposure across SES would narrow the gap by around 10%. These results demonstrate how inequalities in higher education choice can be perpetuated or mitigated through high school peer networks.
Publications and papers
Publications
Kenedi, G. & Sirugue, L. (2023). Intergenerational income mobility in France: A comparative and geographic analysis. Journal of Public Economics, 226, 104974.
Working papers
Kenedi, G. (2024). Beyond the enrolment gap: Financial barriers and high-achieving, low-income students' persistence in higher education. Centre for Economic Performance Discussion Paper no. 1987.
