Essays in the Economics of Education

This dissertation is comprised of three essays in the economics of education. In the first essay, I examine how college students' major choice and major switching behavior responds to major-specific labor market shocks. The second essay explores the incidence and persistence of overeducation for workers in the United States. The final essay examines the role that students' cognitive and non-cognitive skills play in their transition from secondary to postsecondary education, and how the effect of these skills are moderated by race, gender, and socioeconomic status.

Materials for a history of Hungarian academic orientalism: The case of Gyula Germanus

This article provides materials for an institutional history of academic Hungarian Orientalism through the life of Gyula Germanus (1884-1979). Using hitherto unexploited archives, this text explores his education, integration into academia, and career up to 1939. I argue that Germanus was an assimilated Hungarian of Jewish origin with a strong loyalty to the state. His two conversions - to Calvinism in 1909 and to Islam in 1930 - also transformed him from a minor Turkologist into a popularly acclaimed Arabist. This study demonstrates that academic Orientalism as a national science was a contested vehicle of social mobility in the Hungarian transition from an imperial to a nation-state setting.© 2014 koninklijke brill nv, leiden.