John Eric Humphries

Determinants of Business Start-ups

John Eric Humphries has examined the causes and consequences of entry into and exit from self-employment over the life cycle. He discovered that preexisting skills and career dynamics are important determinants of what types of businesses individuals start, how much capital they employ and how long they remain in self-employment. Subsidies that incentivise self-employment are generally ineffective, both in terms of promoting long-lasting firms and in terms of the welfare and earnings of those induced to enter self-employment.

While visiting CESifo, Mr Humphries will continue work on the above-mentioned project along with two other ventures. His second project (joint work with Juanna Joensen and Greg Veramendi) estimates the labour market returns to college majors in Sweden, accounting for the fact that many students fail to complete the degrees they start. The third project, joint work with Winnie van Dijk and Daniel Tannenbaum, studies the causal effects of eviction in Cook County, Illinois. Using linked administrative data on more than half a million eviction cases, this project proposes the first quasi-experimental design for evaluating the causal impact of eviction on employment, social and schooling outcomes. Using random assignment of judges and variation in judge leniency, the paper studies the effect of eviction on a wide range of short- and long-run household outcomes associated with poverty.

John Eric Humphries’ research focuses on topics in labour economics and applied microeconomics. In particular, he studies how educational and career dynamics are affected by public policy. Much of his work considers how policies affect the acquisition of human capital and the role of cognitive and non-cognitive skills in the labour market.

Mr Humphries is a Cowles postdoctoral associate at Yale University and will be starting as an assistant professor in Yale’s Economics Department in 2018. His published research includes work on the General Educational Development (GED) test, educational choice and the returns to education, dynamic treatment effects, and the role of cognitive and non-cognitive skills in later-life outcomes. John Eric Humphries earned his PhD from the Department of Economics at the University of Chicago in 2017. He is originally from Eagle River, Alaska, and has an MA and BA in economics from the University of Chicago.