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on Labour Economics |
| By: | Cauê Dobbin; Daniel Fernandez; Tom Zohar |
| Abstract: | A well-known empirical regularity is that high-productivity firms have lower worker separation rates, but it is unclear whether this pattern reflects quits or layoffs. Using matched employer-employee data from Brazil that distinguish the reason for each separation, we show that the productivity-separation gradient is driven primarily by layoffs rather than quits. We then propose and test a mechanism in which downward wage rigidity prevents firms from adjusting wages in response to adverse shocks, causing those shocks to translate into layoffs. High-productivity firms are less exposed because their larger markdowns provide a buffer between productivity and wages. Consistent with this mechanism, we find that firms with higher markdowns have lower layoff rates, and that markets with stronger wage rigidity exhibit both higher layoff rates and a steeper productivity-layoff gradient. These findings suggest that productivity differences across firms shape not only wages, but also workers' exposure to job loss. |
| JEL: | J31 J63 |
| Date: | 2026–05 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:35177 |
| By: | Afroza Alam; André Diegmann |
| Abstract: | This paper provides new causal evidence on how patent allowances affect firms and their employees based on quasi-random assignment of patent applications to examiners. Exploiting employer–employee records with newly linked German firm data and web-scraped patent documents, we show that patent-induced shocks reduce firm exit, improve productivity, and increase wages, with rent-sharing elasticities between 0.10 and 0.21. Wage gains are broadly observed across occupational tasks, with high heterogeneity: managers benefit disproportionately in publicly traded firms, whereas broader wage increases accrue to workers in non-traded firms. Our findings highlight the role of institutional features and firm organization in shaping how rents are shared. |
| Keywords: | innovation, firm performance, worker compensation, rent sharing |
| JEL: | O31 O34 J31 D22 |
| Date: | 2026 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ces:ceswps:_12666 |
| By: | Adrienne Lucas; Patrick McEwan |
| Abstract: | In 1965–1966, Chile built and staffed thousands of new primary classrooms in supply-constrained communities. Using a quasi-experimental design and large census samples, we show that childhood exposure to school construction substantially improved the schooling and labor market outcomes of adults and closed a persistent female disadvantage in school attainment. Women’s exposure to the policy had large intergenerational spillovers on their children’s on-time grade progression and completed schooling. The marginal value of public funds is 13, including direct effects on adults and intergenerational spillovers. |
| JEL: | H52 I24 I25 I28 J16 O15 |
| Date: | 2026–05 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:35042 |
| By: | Arendt, Jacob (Rockwool Foundation Research Unit); Bolvig, Iben (The Danish Center for Social Science Research) |
| Abstract: | This study estimates the effects of an employment programme for disadvantaged unemployed individuals. The programme emphasized on-the-job training and contracting the unemployed for a few paid work hours as a stepping stone into the labour market. Evaluated through a randomised controlled trial, the programme was found to accelerate transitions into part-time work. Contrary to its intention, it permanently increased the share of participants receiving disability pensions among the most disadvantaged groups. To explain this finding, we suggest that training, while enhancing productivity for some, simultaneously provided information of employability used in the assessment of disability pension eligibility. |
| Keywords: | unemployed, active labour market policy, disability pension, immigration |
| JEL: | J14 J15 J64 D61 |
| Date: | 2026–05 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp18618 |
| By: | Cockx, Bart (Ghent University); Egebark, Johan (Swedish Public Employment Service); Van Hoye, Greet (Ghent University); Videnord, Emilie (Swedish Public Employment Service); Vikström, Johan (IFAU and Uppsala University) |
| Abstract: | educed motivation among jobseekers over the unemployment spell may lead to declining job-finding rates. We report findings from a low-cost digital intervention with motivational emails aimed at enhancing and sustaining motivation and search effort among job seekers in Sweden. Using a randomized controlled trial that included 200, 720 job seekers, we evaluate both carrot messages aimed at encouraging the pursuit of personal goals and intrinsic motivation and stick messages focusing on external pressure and constraints. A large share of job seekers opened the emails, and they triggered behavioral responses. Both types of messages backfired, reducing search effort and job-finding rates. The carrot messages reduced both the number of job applications and job finding, particularly among men. One likely explanation is that these messages signal to job seekers that the Public Employment Service was less controlling than initially perceived, prompting a reduction in effort. The stick messages backfired for job seekers who, at the onset of unemployment, reported that they were motivated by an inner drive rather than by constraints. These findings underscore the challenges of motivating job seekers to actively search for jobs and suggest that low-cost digital interventions, in isolation, are inadequate and may even be counterproductive. |
| Keywords: | Job search motivation; Job-finding rates; Digital interventions Behavioral interventions Randomized controlled trial |
| JEL: | A12 D01 D91 J64 J68 |
| Date: | 2026–04–10 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hhs:ifauwp:2026_008 |
| By: | Hanna Brosch; Elisabeth Grewenig; Philipp Lergetporer; Katharina Werner; Helen Zeidler |
| Abstract: | Gender norms about parental labor supply are central to explaining persistent gender inequalities in the labor market, yet their causal determinants remain poorly understood. We examine whether people’s gender attitudes are driven by mothers’ and fathers’ earnings, which may shape views about the efficient allocation of paid work and care. In a large-scale representative vignette experiment in Germany (N > 10, 000), we randomly vary pre-childbirth earnings and measure whether respondents recommend that the mother (father) stay home with the child while the father (mother) works full-time. Without specifying earnings, 90% recommend that the mother stay home. This share remains high when we specify that the mother earns less (93%). When she earns more, the share drops sharply to 47%, yet nearly half of respondents still recommend that the mother stay home. This asymmetric response rejects a purely income-based explanation of gender norms. Thus, economic circumstances shape gender attitudes, but deeply rooted norms persist even when they conflict with financial incentives. |
| Keywords: | gender norms, labor supply, gender, survey experiment |
| JEL: | C90 D13 J16 J22 |
| Date: | 2026 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ces:ceswps:_12674 |
| By: | Megalokonomou, Rigissa (Monash University) |
| Abstract: | This paper studies how gender representation affects collective decision-making in expert committees. I exploit quasi-random assignment of judges to panels in the Greek Supreme Court using newly digitized data on 3, 700 criminal appeals. I find that panels with more female judges are more likely to reject appeals and less likely to delegate cases. Effects are nonlinear and emerge primarily once at least three of five judges are female; below this level, representation has no detectable effect. The mechanism appears to operate at the panel rather than the individual level - panels with a higher share of female judges take significantly longer to decide, especially in complex cases and in familiar panel compositions, consistent with more thorough deliberation rather than coordination costs. These findings suggest that diversity policies targeting modest increases in female representation will have limited impact unless they shift the deliberative composition of the group itself. |
| Keywords: | panel decisions, gender composition, quasi-random assignment, Supreme Court |
| JEL: | J16 D03 D71 J78 |
| Date: | 2026–05 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp18639 |
| By: | Arindrajit Dube |
| Abstract: | California’s AB 1228 raised the minimum wage for large fast-food chains to $20 per hour in April 2024—roughly 77 percent of the state’s median hourly wage, the highest wage floor for fast-food workers in the U.S. Using QCEW data through 2025Q3, I estimate that the policy raised fast-food wages by about 7 percent. A conventional difference-in-differences yields an employment own-wage elasticity (OWE) of −0.19; synthetic difference-in-differences, which reweights controls to match California’s pretreatment trajectory, shrinks the OWE to −0.04. Newly available QWI data through 2024Q4 yield estimates that are on average more positive. Across 32 QCEW and QWI specifications, the OWE ranges from −0.29 to +0.26, bracketing the median OWE of −0.02 I compute across 27 post-2010 state minimum-wage events despite AB 1228’s much larger bite. The QWI also reveals a sharp reduction in the separation rate, with own-wage elasticities of −1.7 to −4.2—several times the restaurant-sector benchmark in Dube et al. (2016) and consistent with a monopsonistic quit-reduction channel. Wage and separation-rate effects concentrate among large employers covered by AB 1228, with limited spillovers. The fall in separations also helps reconcile the somewhat more negative QCEW employment estimates. |
| JEL: | J0 J20 J80 J88 |
| Date: | 2026–05 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:35171 |
| By: | Abboud, Ali (American University of Beirut); Bazzi, Samuel (University of California San Diego); Canaan, Serena (Simon Fraser University); Deeb, Antoine (World Bank); Mouganie, Pierre (Simon Fraser University) |
| Abstract: | This paper examines how authority figures in higher education shape gender norms over the long run. We exploit the random assignment of first-year students to faculty advisors at an elite university in the Middle East, combining administrative records with an alumni survey measuring gender attitudes up to 24 years later. Women assigned to female advisors adopt more egalitarian views about politics and work, while men become more conservative. Effects are strongest among religious students and in male-dominated STEM fields, where female authority is especially counter-stereotypical, and may persist through reinforcement: women assigned to female advisors later sort toward female instructors and more gender-themed courses. Our results are not driven by generic exposure to successful women—randomized exposure to high-achieving female peers has little effect, while the largest impacts come from senior and high-value-added female advisors. A simple framework combining belief updating and identity-based status threat explains these patterns. Our findings reveal a progress paradox whereby gains in female representation in elite authority expand opportunities for women while intensifying backlash among men, deepening gender polarization. |
| Keywords: | gender norms, higher education, polarization, role models, backlash, religion |
| JEL: | I23 J16 J24 P00 Z12 Z13 |
| Date: | 2026–04 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp18611 |
| By: | Ariel J. Binder; Max Risch; John L. Voorheis |
| Abstract: | We provide new county-level estimates of intergenerational mobility, covering multiple economic concepts: total income, labor income, homeownership, housing wealth, and total wealth. This is possible via small-area estimation techniques and linked survey and administrative data covering millions of U.S. children born between 1978 and 1986. We find that relative mobility in wealth concepts shows less spatial clustering and more spatial variation than relative mobility in income concepts. Many cities and their suburbs exhibit lower relative mobility (i.e. higher intergenerational persistence) in wealth concepts than in income concepts. Next, we show that various local characteristics are associated with some concepts of economic mobility but not with others. For example, we estimate a strong negative association between the local severity of the Great Recession and child income, regardless of parent position in the income distribution. However, the negative association between recession severity and wealth only exists among children from poorer families. We provide a public-use data package to facilitate further research. |
| JEL: | D31 E24 O18 |
| Date: | 2026–05 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:35219 |
| By: | Martín Leites (IECON-UDELAR, Uruguay and EQUALITAS.); Xavier Ramos (Department of Applied Economics, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, Spain; IZA and EQUALITAS.); Cecilia Rodríguez (IECON-UDELAR, Uruguay.); Joan Vilá (IECON-UDELAR, Uruguay.) |
| Abstract: | We contribute to the very incipient literature that estimates the intergenerational mobility of income from large-scale administrative data using high-quality income data and provide novel evidence of intergenerational income mobility in a middle-income country, Uruguay. Our estimates address the important role of informal labor markets, one of the features of low- and middle-income countries, and a major challenge to obtain unbiased estimates of intergenerational mobility in these countries. We estimate an IRA of 0.292, indicating that persistence is higher in Uruguay than in high-income countries, but lower than in the US. Our results show that (i) informal income increases intergenerational persistence, (ii) intergenerational persistence is higher at the upper half of the distribution, especially at the richest decile, and (iii) intergenerational income persistence is largest among parents and children of the same sex. |
| Keywords: | Intergenerational income mobility, Informal labor markets, Uruguay. |
| Date: | 2026–05 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:uab:wprdea:wpdea2603 |
| By: | Andrea Del Pizzo; Martin Nybom; Jan Stuhler |
| Abstract: | This chapter reviews indirect estimators of intergenerational mobility, focusing on approaches that infer parent-child or other family associations when direct income data are incomplete or unavailable. We synthesize methods based on instrumental variables, imputation using observable characteristics such as education and occupation, surname-based estimators, and multigenerational linkages. To unify these approaches, we introduce a stylized framework in which socioeconomic status is transmitted through multiple pathways with heterogeneous persistence rates. Within this framework, both direct and indirect estimators can be interpreted as weighted averages of these underlying transmission channels. A central insight is that the choice of instrument or imputation strategy determines these weights, leading different methods to capture distinct aspects of the transmission process. We highlight implications for interpretation, showing that indirect estimators need not recover conventional parent-child correlations but can instead provide complementary evidence on long-run persistence and the mechanisms underlying persistent inequalities. |
| Date: | 2026–05 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:arx:papers:2605.19154 |
| By: | Ylenia Brilli (Ca’ Foscari University of Venice); Elena Cottini (Catholic University of the Sacred Heart); Paolo Ghinetti (University of Eastern Piedmont); Gloria Moroni (Ca’ Foscari University of Venice) |
| Abstract: | University systems in many countries expanded by establishing new institutions in areas previously lacking higher education. We study Italy's postwar university expansion, which opened the first faculties in provinces that had never hosted one. Exploiting variation in the timing of these openings across provinces and birth cohorts in an event-study design, we find that local access increased graduation rates by 3.2 percentage points on average across treated cohorts (approximately 26 percent relative to the pre-treatment mean), with a sharp discontinuity of 1.2 percentage points at the enrollment-age threshold. The effect is significant across all urbanization levels and increasing in more urbanized provinces, consistent with complementarities between university access and local labour market conditions. Women benefited disproportionately, though gender gaps in labour market outcomes narrowed by less than those in education. Spillover effects to neighbouring provinces exist but are of secondary magnitude, with the local effect approximately twice the size of the neighbour effect. At the province level, these first openings reduced educational disparities between provinces that gained a university and those that remained unserved. |
| Keywords: | Tertiary education, Higher education expansion, Gender gap, spatial inequality |
| JEL: | I23 J16 J21 J24 H55 R12 |
| Date: | 2026 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ven:wpaper:2026:17 |
| By: | Catia Batista; Lara Bohnet; Jules Gazeaud; Julia Seither |
| Abstract: | International migration can promote development in both origin and destination countries. We hypothesize that migrant integration in destination countries is an important constraint on these gains. Using a randomized controlled trial, we study the effects of a low-cost, scalable digital intervention designed to reduce information frictions among Cape Verdean immigrants in Portugal. Access to the intervention improves migrants’ labor market outcomes, legal status, social integration with native-born individuals, and aspirations. These integration gains generate international spillovers, increasing political participation and leading to more egalitarian gender norms in the migrants’ origin-country. Leveraging variation in official destination country electoral data, we show that political participation transmits through increased exposure of better-integrated migrants to prevalent local norms at destination. These international turnout spillovers are weaker in localities with higher far-right support, consistent with a less migrant welcoming political climate attenuating norm diffusion. |
| Keywords: | International migration, Migrant integration, Randomized field experiment, Employment, Immigrant regularization, Remittances, Voting, Gender norms |
| JEL: | F22 J61 O15 |
| Date: | 2025 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:unl:novafr:wp2503 |
| By: | Selahattin Imrohoroglu; Zhixiu Yu |
| Abstract: | Employment rates for workers aged 55–64 increased by an average of 28.5 percentage points across sixteen countries between 2004 and 2019, with Austria, Italy, and the Netherlands experiencing increases larger than their entire 2004 employment rate. We examine what explains these dramatic gains and their substantial heterogeneity across countries and demographic groups. Using harmonized Health and Retirement Study data, we document three key empirical patterns. First, employment increases concentrated among women, healthier individuals, and more educated workers. Second, contrary to prior research, changes in weekly hours per worker are mixed rather than uniformly negative, with gains occurring primarily at the extensive margin. Third, employment growth accelerated during 2013–2019 compared to 2007–2013. While existing research examines longevity and pension reforms as separate channels, we show their interaction is quantitatively important. Longevity improvements amplify pension reform effects: when survival probabilities increase, actuarial adjustments for delayed claiming provide higher benefits collected over longer periods, strengthening work incentives. We formalize this mechanism in a lifecycle framework yielding testable predictions about margins of adjustment and demographic heterogeneity. Countries experiencing both pension reforms and substantial longevity gains show employment increases 15–20 percentage points larger than countries with reforms alone. This interaction helps explain why responses were exceptionally large in some countries, why growth accelerated after 2013, and why effects concentrate among healthier and more educated workers. Our findings suggest pension reform effectiveness depends critically on demographic context. Because effects concentrate at the extensive margin, policies raising retirement ages are more effective than hours flexibility policies. |
| Date: | 2026–04 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cnn:wpaper:26-006e |
| By: | Pierre Boutros (Université Côte d'Azur, CNRS, GREDEG, France); Michele Pezzoni (Université Côte d'Azur, CNRS, GREDEG, France; Observatoire des Sciences et Techniques, HCERES, France); Lionel Nesta (Université Côte d'Azur, CNRS, GREDEG, France; OFCE, Sciences Po, France; SKEMA Business School, France); Sonia Paty (Université Lumière Lyon 2, CNRS, Université Jean Monnet Saint-Etienne, emlyon business school, GATE (UMR 5824), Lyon, France) |
| Abstract: | This paper investigates the factors predicting the destination choice of mobile researchers. To do so, we use a unique dataset on researchers’ mobility between labs within the largest French public research organization from 2012 to 2022. We find that relational links, namely citation and co-authorship links between mobile researchers and destination lab members, are among the strongest predictors of researchers’ destination choices. Specifically, a citation link prior to mobility between a researcher and a lab is associated with a 3.7 percentage-point higher probability that the researcher chooses that lab as a destination, while a co-authorship link is associated with a 9.8 percentage-point higher probability. We argue that citation and co-authorship links are highly relevant because they serve as information channels to help address substantial information asymmetry between researchers and potential destination labs before mobility. We further find that citation links are better predictors of destination choice when the cognitive distance between the researcher and the lab is high, whereas co-authorship plays a stronger role when the cognitive distance is low. Finally, we find that other lab characteristics, such as the size, productivity, and funding availability, are less relevant to the destination choice. |
| Keywords: | Mobile researchers, Internal labor markets, Information asymmetry, Destination choice |
| JEL: | D83 J61 J24 |
| Date: | 2026–05 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:gre:wpaper:2026-14 |
| By: | Ben Sprung-Keyser; Sonya Porter |
| Abstract: | We examine how place shapes the production of human capital across the lifecycle. We ask: do those places that most effectively produce human capital in childhood also have local labor markets that do so in adulthood? We consider the following determinants of wages across place: 1) location-specific wage premiums, 2) adult human capital accumulation due to local labor market exposure, and 3) childhood human capital accumulation. We construct estimates of location wage premiums using AKM-style estimates of movers across US commuting zones and validate these estimates using evidence from plausibly exogenous out-migration from New Orleans in response to Hurricane Katrina. Next, we examine differential earnings trajectories among movers to construct estimates of human capital accumulation due to labor market exposure. We validate these estimates using wage changes of multi-time movers. Finally, we estimate the impact of place on childhood human capital production using age variation in moves during childhood. Crucially, our estimates of location wage premiums and adult human capital accumulation allow us to construct estimates of the causal effect of place during childhood that are not confounded by correlated labor market exposure. Using these estimates, we show there is a tradeoff between those places that most effectively produce human capital in childhood and the local labor markets that do so in adulthood. We find that each 1-rank increase in earnings due to adult labor market exposure trades off with a 0.5 rank decrease in earnings due to the local childhood environment. This pattern is closely linked to city size, as adult human capital accumulation generally increases with city size, while childhood human capital accumulation falls. These divergent trajectories are associated with differences in both the physical structure of cities and the nature of social interaction therein. |
| JEL: | H0 J0 J24 J62 |
| Date: | 2026–05 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:35203 |
| By: | Biroli, Pietro (University of Bologna); Martin-Bassols, Nicolau (University of Bologna); Marees, Andries T. (Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam); van Kippersluis, Hans (Tinbergen Institute; Erasmus University Rotterdam); A. Rietveld, Cornelius (Tinbergen Institute; Erasmus University Rotterdam); Arce, Pia (University of Zurich); Thom, Kevin (University of Iowa); von Hinke, Stephanie (University of Bristol); Vollen, Jeremy (Northwestern University); Galama, Titus (Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam; Tinbergen Institute; University of Southern California) |
| Abstract: | The start of a human's life can be characterized by two lotteries: that of your genes (nature) and the family you were born into (nurture). These set in motion a trajectory, from birth onward, in health and human capital. Leveraging three longitudinal social-science data sets, we systematically analyze the relationship between an individual's genotype, the socioeconomic status (SES) of the families they grew up in, and their realized traits in adulthood. We proxy an individual's genetic predisposition by polygenic indexes (PGIs) and family SES by a latent factor of parental education and father's (former) occupational status. We then investigate how PGIs, parental SES, and their interaction contribute to later-life outcomes across a range of forty-five socioeconomic, anthropometric, health, behavioral, and personality traits. We find strong genetic and socioeconomic associations with these phenotypes, but no evidence of sizable gene-environment interactions. |
| Keywords: | gene-by-environment interplay, genoeconomics, polygenic indices, social science genetics, ESSGN |
| JEL: | I14 I24 J24 D31 C38 |
| Date: | 2026–04 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp18607 |
| By: | Arendt, Jacob (Rockwool Foundation Research Unit); Holm, Anders (Western University) |
| Abstract: | This study examines the impact of private school attendance on segregation and student achievement in compulsory school in Denmark. We show that increased private school attendance is driven by students from high socio-economic groups. Leveraging variation across municipalities, grade and calendar years and instrumental variables based on private school openings, we find that higher private school enrollment is associated with higher segregation of disadvantaged children. From event study models of the private school openings and a mover design that controls for student parental background, peer parental background, past achievement and non-cognitive scores, we find small achievement effects of private school attendance. |
| Keywords: | private schools, socio-economic and ethnic segregation, student achievement |
| JEL: | I21 I24 J15 R28 |
| Date: | 2026–05 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp18617 |