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on Labour Economics |
| By: | Aldén, Lina (Department of Economics and Statistics, Linneaus University); Boschini, Anne (Swedish Institute for Social Research (SOFI), Stockholm University); Tallås Ahlzén, Malin (IFAU - Institute for Evaluation of Labour Market and Education Policy) |
| Abstract: | Fathers’ parental leave uptake remains low in many advanced economies despite substantial policy efforts. We study a setting where financial and eligibility barriers are minimal: employed, native-born first-time fathers entitled to generous, non-transferable leave benefits. Using Swedish population register data for 1995–2015, we document three key facts: (i) low uptake follows a persistent U-shaped income gradient, (ii) its determinants vary across the distribution—economic constraints at the bottom and top, workplace norms in the middle—and (iii) these constraints have grown more salient over time. Quota reforms increased uptake on average but did not narrow differences in low uptake between constrained and unconstrained fathers. Using quasi-random sibling-sex composition, we show that exposure to traditional gender-role environments increases the likelihood of low uptake in recent cohorts. The results highlight the limits of financial incentives and point to workplace and household norms as central barriers to equal parental leave participation. |
| Keywords: | Men; parental leave; gender norms; father’s quota |
| JEL: | D13 J13 J16 J18 |
| Date: | 2026–05–12 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hhs:ifauwp:2026_009 |
| By: | Björn Thor Arnarson; Magnus Tolum Buus; Andreas Moxnes; Jakob Roland Munch; Chong Xiang |
| Abstract: | We study how firm growth reorganizes the division of labor across firms in global value chains. Using a novel dataset linking cross-border firm-to-firm transactions to matched employer–employee data, we show that demand shocks increase trade between firms while reducing occupational similarity, implying greater specialization. We develop and estimate a model of task outsourcing in which firms expand by reallocating tasks to suppliers. The model matches the data and implies endogenous scale economies. Eliminating outsourcing reduces average labor productivity by 25 percent and increases input costs by 10 percent, highlighting the central role of specialization in shaping firm performance. |
| Keywords: | supply chains, global value chains, outsourcing, scale economies, labor specialization, labor productivity, production networks |
| JEL: | F10 F12 F16 D24 L11 L25 |
| Date: | 2026 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ces:ceswps:_12710 |
| By: | Irmert, Natalie (Department of Economics, Lund University) |
| Abstract: | This paper investigates whether cultural gender norms about occupations, defined as a society’s perception of what is appropriate work for men and women, contribute to persistent gender-stereotypical occupational choice. Using large-scale international survey data and high-quality administrative records, I study whether second-generation immigrant men (women) are less likely to work in an occupation that is perceived as female (male)-typical work in their country of ancestry. I find robust evidence that men, but not women, adhere to occupation-specific cultural gender norms: men are less likely to work in an occupation that is perceived as female work in their country of ancestry, while there is no such effect for women. To investigate mechanisms behind this result, I design an international survey experiment. The results corroborate the gender asymmetry found in the observational data and reveal a social perception penalty for men in heavily female-dominated occupations, but no comparable consistent penalty for women in male-dominated fields. Taken together, the findings of this paper suggest that persistent social norms are a key factor behind the slow integration of men into female-dominated occupations. |
| Keywords: | occupational choice; social norms; epidemiological approach |
| JEL: | J16 J24 J62 |
| Date: | 2026–05–28 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hhs:lunewp:2026_005 |
| By: | R. Jason Faberman; Andreas I. Mueller; Aysegul Sahin |
| Abstract: | This paper studies gender gaps in labor-market outcomes, with a focus on job ladder dynamics. We show that women experience substantially lower wage growth conditional on prior wages despite nearly identical job-to-job transition rates for men and women. To reconcile these observations, we document gender differences in the valuation of nonwage job amenities and in job search behavior, and develop a multi-dimensional job-ladder model with endogenous search effort where workers value both wages and amenities. The model allows for gender heterogeneity in separation rates, search effort, the value of nonemployment, amenity valuations, and bargaining power, enabling a joint analysis of gender wage and employment gaps. A quantitative decomposition shows that differences in preferences for nonwage amenities account for nearly 40 percent of the gender pay gap. Differences in the value of nonemployment and bargaining power explain most of the remainder, with only a limited role for differences in separation rates and search behavior. Finally, we show that increases in job amenities—such as the expansion of remote work—raise the gender wage gap while reducing gender differences in employment. |
| Keywords: | Gender wage gap; Job search; job amenities; On-the-job search |
| JEL: | J16 J60 |
| Date: | 2026–03–30 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:fip:fedhwp:103282 |
| By: | Ahammer, Alexander (Department of Economics, Johannes Kepler University Linz, Austria; and Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA)); Halla, Martin (Department of Economics, Vienna University of Economics and Business, Austria; Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA); Austrian National Public Health Institute (GOEG); Rockwool Foundation Berlin; and Austrian Institute of Economic Research (WIFO)); Heckl, Pia (ifo Institute; Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich; and CESifo); Winter-Ebmer, Rudolf (Department of Economics, Johannes Kepler University Linz, Austria; Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA); Institute for Advanced Studies (IHS); Rockwool Foundation Berlin, Centre for Economic Policy Research (CEPR)) |
| Keywords: | Long-term unemployment among older workers is particularly difficult to overcome. We study the impacts of a large-scale job guarantee program that offered up to two years of fully subsidized employment to long-term unemployed individuals aged 50 and above. Using a sharp age-based discontinuity in eligibility, we find that participation increased regular, unsubsidized employment by 43 percentage points two years after the program ended. The gains are driven by transitions into new firms and industries, rather than continued subsidized employment, and we find no evidence of displacement effects for non-participants or spillovers to family members. The program had no measurable short-run health effects. |
| JEL: | J64 J08 J78 I14 H51 |
| Date: | 2026–03 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ihs:ihsdps:number1 |
| By: | Lea-Karla Matic |
| Abstract: | Using Austrian administrative data, I estimate the causal effect of miscarriage on women’s labor market and health outcomes, as well as spillover effects on close family members. To do so, I construct counterfactuals for affected individuals from those who experience a miscarriage at a later point in time. The results show that affected women experience short-term labor market detachment, worsening mental health, and increased investment in future fertility. Subsequent fertility shapes these effects, with more persistent adverse outcomes among women without a subsequent birth. For spouses, I find suggestive evidence of mental health effects, but no significant changes in labor supply or fertility-related investments beyond those observed prior to the loss. For sisters, the results indicate increased preventive reproductive healthcare use that is not explained by their own pregnancies. |
| Keywords: | miscarriage, fertility, mental health, labor supply, spillover effects |
| JEL: | I10 I12 J13 J22 |
| Date: | 2026–04 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:jku:econwp:2026-04 |
| By: | Kevin Rinz; David Wasser |
| Abstract: | Using public-use data from the Current Population Survey, we estimate the effects of changes in unemployment insurance (UI) generosity on the wages of new hires from unemployment, job changers, and continuously employed workers. We find similar, modestly positive elasticities across all groups of workers. Posted wages respond similarly on average, but differences in distributional effects suggest that changes in wage posting are unlikely to fully explain the effects on realized wages. More generous UI also reduces hiring from unemployment and job-to-job transitions, reduces labor force exit, and increases the hiring of new labor force entrants and labor force non-participants. |
| Keywords: | unemployment insurance; wages; wage posting; labor search |
| JEL: | J65 J31 J64 |
| Date: | 2026–05–26 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:fip:fedcwq:103300 |
| By: | Serena Canaan, Pierre Mouganie, Ali Abboud, Samuel Bazzi, Antoine Deeb (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 and combine 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. These effects are strongest among religious students and in male-dominated STEM fields, where female authority is especially counter stereotypical. The effects may persist through reinforcement, as women assigned to female advisors later sort toward female instructors and more gender-themed courses. Our results do not appear to be driven by generic exposure to successful women. Instead, they point to a distinct role for authority in transmitting gender norms: 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 helps explain these patterns of female empowerment and male backlash. More broadly, our findings reveal a progress paradox whereby gains in female representation in elite authority expand opportunities for women while intensifying backlash among men, thereby deepening gender polarization. |
| Date: | 2026–05 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:sfu:sfudps:dp26-09 |
| By: | Olivieri, Sergio; Razzu, Giovanni; Wambile, Ayago Esmubancha |
| Abstract: | This study examines intergenerational educational mobility in Bangladesh across cohorts born between the 1950s and 1990s, using data from the 2022 Bangladesh Household Income and Expenditure Survey. Intergenerational regression coefficients and intergenerational correlations are estimated, yielding three main findings. First, while the intergenerational regression coefficient declines for the 1990s cohort, suggesting reduced persistence of the effect of parental education on children's outcomes, the intergenerational correlation, which accounts for inequality in educational attainment across both generations, follows an inverted U-shaped pattern, resulting in no net mobility change. This finding reverses earlier evidence of increasing persistence through the 1970s and indicates that educational expansion since the 1980s has progressively benefited children of less-educated parents. Second, unlike patterns observed elsewhere in the region, where urban residence confers mobility advantages, Bangladesh exhibits no urban premium. Overall mobility remains higher in rural areas, although substantial convergence occurs in the 1990s cohort. At the regional level, an East-West convergence is observed, driven by mobility improvements in traditionally less-mobile Eastern regions. Third, women historically exhibited higher mobility than men through the 1980s, with gender convergence emerging only in the 1990s cohort, largely due to accelerated male mobility gains among urban males. Ba ngladesh's educational mobility trajectory is thus characterized by convergence across gender, urban-rural, and region dimensions, a pattern distinct from both its historical experience and broader South Asian trends, although educational gains remain disconnected from labor market outcomes. |
| Date: | 2026–05–19 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:wbk:wbrwps:11386 |
| By: | Pinjas Albagli; Nye Cominetti; Rui Costa; Andrew Eyles; Guglielmo Ventura |
| Abstract: | We study the role of job-to-job transitions in shaping wage dynamics in the United Kingdom. We show that job moves have continued to generate substantial wage gains for movers even during a period of real wage stagnation and declining labour market mobility. Using an econometric model that accounts for worker, firm, and match heterogeneity, we decompose the job mobility premium and find a limited role for worker and firm effects, with most of the return explained by match-specific factors. We also examine the determinants of job mobility and show that much of its recent decline reflects compositional changes in the workforce, particularly ageing and increasing occupational professionalisation. We conclude by discussing the policy challenges of promoting job mobility as a driver of wage growth and more efficient labour market reallocation. |
| Date: | 2026–05–28 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cep:cepdps:dp2188 |
| By: | Cauê Dobbin; Daniel Fernandez; Tom Zohar |
| Abstract: | We challenge the view that the negative correlation between firm quality and separation rates reflects efficient separations. Using Brazilian administrative data, we show that this correlation is driven by lower layoff rates at high-quality firms, not differences in quits. We develop a job search model where wage rigidity and productivity uncertainty generate inefficient layoffs. The model predicts that higher-quality firms have larger markdowns and, consequently, fewer layoffs. Empirically, we validate this by showing that firms facing stronger wage rigidity have higher layoffs and a steeper quality-layoff correlation, and that markdowns are higher in better firms and negatively correlated with layoffs. |
| Keywords: | layoffs, quits, separations, firm quality, wage rigidity, monopsony, markdowns, job search, Brazil |
| JEL: | J63 J31 J41 E24 J64 |
| Date: | 2026 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ces:ceswps:_12685 |
| By: | Patrick Coate; Kyle Mangum |
| Abstract: | This paper shows the declining trend in internal migration in the United States is primarily due to increasing home attachment in “fast locations, ” areas with relatively high rates of population turnover. These locations were population growth destinations in the 20th century, with transient populations that settled as regional population growth converged. The qualitative patterns of the U.S. experience can be generated by a model of location choice in heterogeneous regions with overlapping generations when the population has a home bias that varies endogenously with the history of population change. Using a novel measure of home attachment, this paper estimates a structural model of migration that distinguishes moving frictions from home utility. Simulations quantify channels of the mobility decline. Rising home attachment accounts for much of the decline, predominantly in fast locations. Population aging explains most of the remainder but in a more spatially neutral way. |
| Keywords: | declining internal migration; labor mobility; home attachment; rootedness; local ties; conditional choice probability estimation |
| JEL: | J61 R23 R11 C50 |
| Date: | 2026–05–19 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:fip:fedpwp:103268 |
| By: | Ariel Binder; Max Risch; John 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 on census.gov to facilitate further research. |
| Keywords: | housing markets, intergenerational mobility, homeownership, wealth, income |
| JEL: | E24 O18 R31 D31 |
| Date: | 2026–05 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cen:wpaper:26-30 |
| By: | Samantha Horn (University of Chicago); Peter Schwardmann (Carnegie Mellon University); Egon Tripodi (Hertie School) |
| Abstract: | Evaluative social interactions are pervasive in labor markets. Inequality in these settings can arise not only from how individuals are treated or perform when evaluated, but from whether they enter evaluation at all. We study these margins in the context of social anxiety. In a controlled online experiment (N = 922), applicants decide whether to complete a live video interview that determines a monetary hiring bonus. We find that inequities associated with social anxiety are concentrated in participation rather than in performance or treatment. Socially anxious applicants are substantially less willing to interview, hold more pessimistic beliefs about being hired, and correctly anticipate a worse experience. Yet they perform no worse and are evaluated no differently. Interview experience does not attenuate the relative pessimism of socially anxious individuals, a pattern that is inconsistent with Bayesian updating under comparable signals. We use our rich audio-visual data and open-ended reflection texts to show that, instead, socially anxious applicants interpret similar interactions more negatively. We then provide evidence on organizational interventions aimed at closing social anxiety gaps. Finally, we show that social anxiety explains a meaningful share of inequalities commonly attributed to gender and social skill differences and is associated with significant earnings gaps in national data. |
| Keywords: | social anxiety; job interviews; beliefs; mental health; discrimination; learning; |
| JEL: | D83 J71 I10 C90 |
| Date: | 2026–06–01 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:rco:dpaper:574 |
| By: | Bhalotra, Sonia (University of Warwick); Daysal, N. Meltem (University of Copenhagen); Fjællegaard Jensen, Mathias (University of Oxford); Jørgensen, Thomas H. (University of Copenhagen); Montpetit, Sébastien (University of Warwick) |
| Abstract: | Using four decades of Danish administrative data, we estimate the intergenerational transmission of violent crime victimization. Sons are twice as likely, and daughters three times as likely, to be victimized if a parent was victimized, with stronger associations if the mother was the victim. Controlling for cohort, municipality, socio-economic factors, parental cohabitation, and parental offending explains about 60% of this correlation. The link is weaker in higher-income families; it persists for sons, but is driven to zero for daughters. Further, children of victimized parents experience lower absolute income mobility, comparable to the Black-White difference for men in the United States |
| Keywords: | victimization, violent crime, intergenerational transmission, income mobility JEL codes: K42, J12, J62 |
| Date: | 2026 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:wrk:warwec:1614 |
| By: | F. Cerina; E. Dienesch; A. Monge-Naranjo; A. Moro |
| Abstract: | Using longitudinal French administrative data (1984–2021), we document that employment polarization after 1994 reflects major changes in labor-market entry rather than mass occupational downgrading or displacement of incumbents. Flows from routine to abstract occupations remain substantial throughout the period, and a large fraction of these upgrades is due to non-college workers. The decisive shift that generates polarization occurs at the entry margin - the net flow from nonemployment into routine occupations reverses around 1994, while the net flow from non-employment into manual work increases. These patterns motivate life-cycle models of occupational choice that explicitly incorporate cohort heterogeneity and separate entry and re-entry margins.. |
| Keywords: | Labor market polarization;Worker flows;Occupational mobility;Routine-biased technological change;Longitudinal data |
| Date: | 2026 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cns:cnscwp:202604 |