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on Labour Economics |
| By: | Lodefalk, Magnus (The Ratio Institute); Löthman, Lydia (The Ratio Institute); Koch, Michael (The Ratio Institute); Engberg, Erik (The Ratio Institute) |
| Abstract: | We show that the age composition of employment within Swedish employers shifts after the arrival of generative AI, with no corresponding reduction in aggregate labour demand. Using 4.6 million job advertisements from Sweden's largest recruitment platform, we find that the broad decline in postings since 2022 aligns with monetary tightening rather than AI, exploiting Sweden's seven-month gap between the Riksbank's first rate hike and the launch of ChatGPT as a timing test. We then use full-population employer–employee register data and an employer-level difference-in-differences design to estimate how AI exposure affects employment composition across six age groups. An event study documents an accelerating decline in employment of 22–25-year-olds in high-AI-exposure occupations, reaching 5.5 per cent by early 2025 relative to less exposed occupations within the same employers, while employment of workers over 50 rose by 1.3 per cent. The widening age gradient suggests that generative AI reshapes hiring composition rather than aggregate demand, with the adjustment burden falling disproportionately on entry-level workers. |
| Keywords: | Generative artificial intelligence; Job postings; Labour demand; Employment composition; Monetary policy |
| JEL: | J23 J24 O33 |
| Date: | 2026–03–16 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hhs:ratioi:0388 |
| By: | Bagger, Jesper (University of Edinburgh); Elholm, Malthe (Aarhus University); Maibom, Jonas (Aarhus University); Vejlin, Rune (Aarhus University) |
| Abstract: | Using 1980--2019 Danish matched employer-employee data, we unpack the rise in wage sorting - the correlation between worker and firm wage fixed effects (Abowd et al., 1999) - from 0.06 to 0.18. The rise is driven entirely by reallocation of employment from persistently low-sorting to persistently high-sorting firms, with the average sorting contribution of any given firm remaining stable over time. A decomposition shows that 60 % reflects reallocation among surviving firms and 40 % firm turnover through entry and exit. Regression analysis identifies firm entry and exit and industry reallocation as the dominant firm-side drivers, and rising educational attainment as the key worker-side factor - reflecting concentration of educated workers in high-sorting firms rather than a systematic tendency of educated workers to form high-sorting matches across all employers. Event studies establish direct job-to-job moves as the primary mechanism through which reallocation is implemented at the worker-level. |
| Keywords: | wage inequality, wage sorting, firm dynamics, employment reallocation, job-to-job mobility, matched employer-employee data |
| JEL: | E24 J21 J31 |
| Date: | 2026–03 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp18502 |
| By: | Bekhtiar, Karim (IHS, Vienna, Austria); Winter-Ebmer, Rudolf (Johannes Kepler University Linz) |
| Abstract: | Providing recently laid off workers with cash benefits may help them overcome mobility costs and thereby stimulate labor mobility. On the other hand, cash benefits may dampen the employment shock and reduce the incentive to move. In this paper, we test these two competing mechanisms against each other. For this we use a severance pay regulation in Austria, which generated a sharp cutoff after which workers became eligible to a severance payment of two monthly salaries. Our results indicate that this cash payment increased labor mobility by around 8% to 12%. This increase is much stronger for worker groups with lower baseline mobility rates. |
| Keywords: | unemployment, labor mobility, internal migration, commuting |
| JEL: | J18 J61 J65 R23 |
| Date: | 2026–03 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp18509 |
| By: | Mark Borgschulte; Heepyung Cho; Darren Lubotsky |
| Abstract: | We examine the differential effects of minimum wages on immigrant and native workers in the United States. We find that minimum wage increases lead to reduced hours of work among immigrants with no effect on their employment. The effects are concentrated among recently-arrived, likely-undocumented workers in high turnover industries. Native workers show no such response, even when examining native subgroups with similar characteristics to the most affected immigrants. We conclude that affected immigrant labor markets feature low-surplus, low-investment employment relationships with flexible hours, but they are embedded in labor markets where replacement is unusually costly. |
| JEL: | J08 J15 J38 J42 J61 |
| Date: | 2026–04 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:35038 |
| By: | Ejermo, Olof (The Ratio Institute); Holmström, Peter (The Ratio Institute) |
| Abstract: | Using population-wide data on Swedish university researchers and teachers, we identify the effects of parenthood on academic careers. Leveraging staggered event-study models that compare mothers and fathers around first birth, we document widening gender gaps in publication output, wage income, promotion, and PhD completion. These gaps arise across all scientific fields. We further document substantial gender differences prior to first birth and among never-parents, indicating that child-related penalties explain only part of the overall academic gender gap. |
| Keywords: | academic careers; child penalty; parenthood; gender gap; Sweden; staggered event study; research productivity |
| JEL: | I23 J13 J16 J24 |
| Date: | 2026–03–27 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hhs:ratioi:0389 |
| By: | Manuel Arellano; Orazio Attanasio; Margherita Borella; Mariacristina De Nardi; Gonzalo Paz-Pardo |
| Abstract: | We develop a new approach to estimating earnings, job, and employment dynamics using subjective expectations data from the NY Fed Survey of Consumer Expectations. These data provide beliefs about future earnings offers and acceptance probabilities, offering direct information on counterfactual outcomes and enabling identification under weaker assumptions. Our framework avoids biases from selection and unobserved heterogeneity that affect models using realized outcomes. First-step fixed-effects regressions identify risk, persistence, and transition effects; second-step GMM recovers the covariance structure of unobserved heterogeneities such as ability, mobility, and match quality. We find lower risk and persistence of the individual productivity component than in prior work, but greater heterogeneity in ability and match quality. Simulations show that reduced-form estimates overstate persistence and volatility on individual-level productivity due to job transitions and sorting. After accounting for heterogeneity, volatility declines and becomes flat across the earnings distribution. These results underscore the value of expectations data. |
| JEL: | C23 C8 D15 J01 |
| Date: | 2026–04 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:35027 |
| By: | Cygan-Rehm, Kamila (Dresden University of Technology (TUD)); Westphal, Matthias (FernUni Hagen, RWI) |
| Abstract: | This paper replicates and extends the evidence on the lifetime effects of school starting age on earnings by Fredriksson and Öckert (2014) for Sweden. Using German data for individuals born between 1945 and 1965, we examine a more rigid system of ability tracking in secondary education, a potential driver of long-term effects. We confirm negligible effects of later school entry for men and positive effects for women. These gender differences arise despite similar effects on educational attainment. By unfolding the gender gaps over the lifecycle, assessing fertility decisions, and maternal employment around the first birth, we show that childbirth postponement and increased labor market attachment after the first birth seem to be plausible mechanisms. |
| Keywords: | school starting age, lifetime effects, education, gender gaps |
| JEL: | I21 I24 I26 |
| Date: | 2026–03 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp18503 |
| By: | Bagues, Manuel (University of Warwick); Makany, Milan (Erasmus University); Vattuone, Giulia (SOFI, Stockholm University); Zinovyeva, Natalia (University of Warwick) |
| Abstract: | We study how faculty promotion decisions shape women's careers and the academic pipeline, using data from 4, 000 Spanish university departments across all disciplines. We identify exogenous variation in promotions using the random assignment of evaluators to promotion committees between 2002 and 2008: applicants whose committees included a co-author or colleague were significantly more likely to qualify for promotion. We document two main findings. First, failing to obtain tenure has asymmetrically lasting consequences for women. Those who narrowly miss tenure are 57 percentage points less likely to be tenured fifteen years later, compared to 29 percentage points for men. Second, when women do obtain tenure, the effects extend well beyond their own careers: promoting a woman to Associate Professor increases female faculty by 1.5 members after 15 years, leads to six additional female PhD graduates over the following decade, and raises the number who subsequently remain in academia and reach tenured positions. |
| Keywords: | academic promotions, women in academia, natural experiment |
| JEL: | I23 J16 J44 M51 |
| Date: | 2026–03 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp18477 |
| By: | Zongwu Cai (Department of Economics, The University of Kansas, Lawrence, KS 66045, USA); Weitong Wang (School of Economics, Dongbei University of Finance and Economics, Dalian, Liaoning 116025, China); Jing Yuan (School of Statistics, Shandong Technology and Business University, Yantai, Shandong 264005, China) |
| Abstract: | Scientifically measuring intergenerational mobility (IGM) and comprehensively analyzing the effects of factors influencing IGM provide a theoretical basis to improve public policies. This paper measures the elasticity of IGM in China and investigates the interaction effects of macro and micro influencing factors using a nonparametric gradient boosting tree quantile regression model. The empirical results show that, first, the gradient boosting tree quantile regression model fits better than the linear quantile regression model, with particularly significant nonlinear characteristics among those with annual incomes between ¥30, 000 and ¥150, 000. The intergenerational income elasticity in China ranges from 0.1861 to 0.7026, indicating a clear ``strong at both ends and weak in the middle'' effect of parental income on offspring income. Second, intergenerational income mobility exhibits heterogeneity in both income and region, with significant differences in the income transmission process and degree of nonlinearity across different regions. Third, this paper specifically explores the IGM characteristics of the two income groups, revealing that the most significant influencing factors for achieving income stratification are economic growth, industrial optimization, intergenerational educational mobility, and wealth capital investment. Finally, this paper explores the poverty trap from the perspective of IGM, showing that in eastern regions, children from wealthy families may experience higher immobility or a wealth trap, while in other regions, children from impoverished families experience higher immobility or a poverty trap. |
| Keywords: | Gradient boosting tree quantile regression; Heterogeneity analysis; Intergenerational income mobility; Partial dependence; Random forest. |
| JEL: | J62 D63 C43 I31 |
| Date: | 2025–03 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:kan:wpaper:202602 |
| By: | Laroche, Patrice (Université de Lorraine); Bryson, Alex (University College London); Joshi, Heather (UCL); Wilkinson, David (UCL) |
| Abstract: | Ours is the first meta-analysis synthesizing results from econometric studies carried out in the UK to assess the size of the gender wage gap (GWG). Drawing on 90 primary studies published between 1974 and 2024 we assess trends in the gap and identify the substantive and methodological factors that explain variance in results across studies. Expressed relative to men’s earnings, the raw GWG averages 25 log points but falls to 13 log points when adjusting for covariates. There has been convergence in the mean wages of men and women at a rate of about 0.3 percentage points per annum, most of which reflects change in the characteristics of workers and their treatment in the labour market rather than differences over time in study characteristics. There is substantial heterogeneity in the size of the GWG by year of observation, worker type and research design, although differences in the size of adjusted GWG by study design are not as large as most economists might imagine. |
| Keywords: | gender wage gap, meta-analysis, UK |
| JEL: | J16 J31 J71 |
| Date: | 2026–03 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp18484 |
| By: | Lizardi, Eduardo (Department of Health Economics and Management, University of Oslo); Fevang, Elisabeth (Ragnar Frisch Centre for Economic Research); Kverndokk, Snorre (Ragnar Frisch Centre for Economic Research); Røed, Knut (Ragnar Frisch Centre for Economic Research) |
| Abstract: | Using Norwegian administrative register data, we show that having a lone parent in the terminal stage of life or close to a nursing home admission has a small negative effect on the offspring’s labor supply, both at the extensive and the intensive margins. While the effects at the intensive margin are reversed after the parent is admitted to nursing home or dies, the negative employment effects are not. We provide evidence indicating that labor supply changes around these critical events are primarily driven by income effects related to a realized or forthcoming inheritance and not by care requirements. Given the scale and quality of publicly provided long-term care in Norway, we conclude that while a parent’s need for care does trigger a significant rise in offspring’s (particularly daughters’) short-term absence from work, it does not noticeably affect their overall employment and earnings. |
| Keywords: | long-term care, labor supply of offspring, inheritance |
| JEL: | J14 J22 |
| Date: | 2026–03 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp18508 |
| By: | Portes, Jonathan (King's College London); Springford, John (Centre for European Reform) |
| Abstract: | This paper estimates the causal impact of Brexit on migrant employment in the United Kingdom using a synthetic difference-in-differences (SDID) framework. We construct a counterfactual trajectory for the UK based on a weighted combination of comparable European economies and compare post-referendum outcomes to this benchmark. Rather than analysing migration flows, which are subject to substantial revision and comparability issues, we focus on employment stocks of foreign-born workers using administrative payroll data. We find that Brexit led to a large compositional shift in migrant labour supply and a modest change in its overall size. Employment of EU-origin workers declined substantially relative to the counterfactual following the 2016 referendum and the subsequent end of free movement. However, this decline was more than offset by a sharp increase in employment among non-EU workers after the introduction of the post-Brexit immigration system in 2021. By 2024, total foreign-born employment is about 0.6% higher than in the absence of Brexit. Brexit did not reduce migrant labour supply as widely expected, but instead reconfigured its composition, and highlight the interaction between migration policy and labour demand. |
| Keywords: | immigration, employment, UK, Brexit, synthetic differences in differences |
| JEL: | J61 J21 F22 J23 C23 |
| Date: | 2026–03 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp18478 |
| By: | Daniel J. Wilson; Xiaoqing Zhou |
| Abstract: | From early 2021 to early 2024, the U.S. experienced an unprecedented boom in unauthorized immigration, followed by a rapid slowdown beginning in mid-2024. We provide the first systematic empirical assessment of the labor- and housing-market effects of this episode. Using newly available administrative microdata on individual immigrants, we construct measures of net unauthorized immigration at the national and local levels and exploit plausibly exogenous variation across local markets. We find that unauthorized immigrant worker flows (UIWF) increased local employment approximately one-for-one, without significant declines in local wages. These inflows also raised local house prices and rents without expanding housing supply, consistent with a housing demand shock in the face of short-run inelastic supply. Lastly, we find that UIWF reduced labor income per capita, consistent with downward wage composition of the local workforce, and strongly reduced government transfers. These findings should help inform policy debates surrounding how unauthorized immigrant labor supply impacts local labor and housing markets as well as public finances. |
| Keywords: | immigration; labor market; housing market; unauthorized immigration; post-pandemic |
| JEL: | E24 H53 J11 J21 J22 J23 J31 J61 R31 |
| Date: | 2026–03–23 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:fip:feddwp:102961 |
| By: | Dykstra, Holly (University of Konstanz); Fernández Guerrico, Sofía (University of Konstanz) |
| Abstract: | Income-based rents in public housing create an earnings disincentive. We collaborate with a public housing authority to design a behaviorally informed program that returns part of the rent induced by higher earnings to residents. Importantly, the program automatically enrolled households and was explicitly designed to make the increased payoff to working salient. Using a difference-in-differences approach, we estimate that annual household-head earnings rise 17% ($1, 370/year) and public assistance falls 7.5%, with impacts on both intensive and extensive margins. These results provide evidence that an in-work benefit designed for salience can offset the earnings disincentive and affect follow-through labor market behavior. |
| Keywords: | labor supply, in-work benefits, salience, public housing |
| JEL: | D91 I38 J22 R38 |
| Date: | 2026–03 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp18483 |
| By: | Berlinski, Samuel (Inter-American Development Bank); Giannola, Michele (University of Naples Federico II, CSEF and the Institute for Fiscal Studies); Toppeta, Alessandro (SOFI, Stockholm University) |
| Abstract: | We study the relative effectiveness, cost-effectiveness, and interaction of family- and school -based learning interventions using a randomized controlled trial in Colombia that assigns children to a parental engagement program, a teacher professional development program, both, or a control group. Both interventions are grounded in a child-centered learning approach that emphasizes active engagement and the progression from informal to formal mathematical understanding. Each intervention independently generates sizable and statistically similar gains in early numeracy (0.17σ and 0.20σ). Combining them produces no additional learning gains, suggesting that the two interventions act as substitutes over the time horizon and skill domain we study. When benefits accruing to future cohorts are taken into account, the teacher development program becomes at least as cost-effective as, and potentially more cost-effective than, the parental engagement intervention. Our results suggest that, in this setting, strategically concentrating resources on a single binding constraint – either at home or in school – maximizes the short-run learning gains per dollar spent. |
| Keywords: | numeracy, childhood development, teacher development, parental engagement, randomized control trial, Colombia |
| JEL: | I21 I25 O15 J13 C93 |
| Date: | 2026–03 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp18485 |
| By: | Daniel Goller; Enzo Brox; Stefan C. Wolter |
| Abstract: | Why do young people sort into poorly fitting occupations? This paper shows that imperfect self-knowledge about skills is an important source of skill mismatch at labor market entry. We use unique data from standardized professional aptitude tests linked to administrative records on educational trajectories and early labor market outcomes in Switzerland. The data allow us to observe objective skills and subjective skill beliefs for many productivity-relevant skills in a high-stakes setting. We document large differences among individuals in how well their beliefs align with their skills. Imperfect self-knowledge predicts misaligned occupational aspirations, higher realized skill mismatch, and a higher probability of dropout. Guided by a Roy-style model of occupational choice with imperfect self-knowledge, we interpret these findings as evidence that distorted self-assessments at the school-to-work transition contribute to the misallocation of talent. |
| Keywords: | Information frictions, Occupational choice, Skill mismatch, Self-knowledge |
| JEL: | D83 J24 J41 |
| Date: | 2026–04 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iso:educat:0253 |
| By: | Dziadula, Eva (University of Notre Dame); Zavodny, Madeline (University of North Florida) |
| Abstract: | The educational distribution of U.S. immigrants shifted significantly to the right in recent decades as the share without a high school diploma fell and the share with a bachelor's degree rose. This improvement coincided with a shift in immigrants' origins toward Asia and rising global education levels. This study examines how much of the change in immigrants' educational distribution over 2000-2019 is due to changes in their distribution across origin countries versus rising attainment among immigrants within origin countries. We demonstrate that within-country changes account for most of the observed increase in the educational distribution. In contrast, changes in where immigrants originated played a minimal role. Finally, we show that economic conditions in origin countries can explain little of this rise, whereas demographic trends and the skill composition of U.S. temporary worker visas are significantly related to changes in immigrants' educational distribution. |
| Keywords: | immigration, education, human capital |
| JEL: | I21 J15 |
| Date: | 2026–03 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp18480 |