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on Labour Economics |
| By: | Ran Abramitzky; Santiago Pérez; Joseph Price |
| Abstract: | We use newly digitized records for 1.2 million students at 60 co-educational U.S. colleges, 1915–1943, linked to enrollment records for their children through 1963, to study how colleges shape marital matching and the intergenerational transmission of educational advantage. About 6% of men and 9% of women marry someone from their own college. This homogamy is largely causal: within colleges, more different-sex classmates and longer campus overlap both raise same-college marriage. Same-college spouses are more educated, and this advantage persists across generations. Children of same-college couples more often attend selective colleges, with spousal education explaining a third of the gap. |
| JEL: | J0 N32 |
| Date: | 2026–08 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:35602 |
| By: | Kamble, Vikrant V.; Motghare, Swapnil |
| Abstract: | We estimate the intertemporal elasticity of labor supply for New York City taxicab drivers using a new instrument: the type of taximeter installed in the vehicle. The two meter systems in use display different default tip percentages, generating plausibly exogenous variation in tip income and hourly pay across shifts. Assignment to the "high-default" meter raises hourly wages by 0.5 percent, entirely through tips, and increases shift hours by 0.9 percent, implying an elasticity of 1.7. These findings align with the standard neoclassical prediction that workers supply more hours when temporary pay rises and shed light on labor-supply behavior in flexible, schedule-setting work environments more broadly. |
| Keywords: | labor supply, Frisch elasticity, intertemporal substitution, taxi drivers, tipping, instrumental variables |
| JEL: | J22 J31 D15 D91 C26 |
| Date: | 2026 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:zbw:glodps:1809 |
| By: | Sydnee Caldwell; Emily Oehlsen |
| Abstract: | We use randomized pay experiments among Uber drivers, paired with a natural experiment in access to a competitor, to examine how outside options shape labor supply to the firm. When hours are flexible, the firm-specific labor supply elasticity combines a market-hours component and a firm-substitution component. Access to a single competing platform nearly doubles drivers’ firm-specific elasticity and cuts the implied monopsony markdown from 68% to about 50%. The same experiments identify sex differences: women are about twice as elastic to the market as men, yet no less elastic to their employer. |
| JEL: | J2 J20 J42 |
| Date: | 2026–08 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:35626 |
| By: | Cockx, Bart; Egebark, Johan; Van Hoye, Greet; Videnord, Emilie; Vikström, Johan |
| Keywords: | Autonomous and controlled motivation, job search, supportive and controlling, large-scale RCT, low-cost intervention, field experiment, backfiring, self-determination theory |
| JEL: | A12 D01 D91 J64 J68 |
| Date: | 2026–08–26 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:unm:umaror:2026002 |
| By: | Anna Hasselqvist |
| Abstract: | Academic inequality between migrants and natives is often attributed to family dynamics that are difficult to observe. Siblings provide a way to study them: I estimate the effect of having a high-achieving sibling on the educational outcomes of children in migrant and native families. Using exogenous variation in sibling achievement from Sweden’s school-entry cutoff in a Regression Discontinuity Design, I show that second-generation migrant girls face a unique disadvantage. A high-achieving brother lowers their grades, while a high-achieving sister has a small positive influence. Spillover effects are negligible for boys and native children regardless of sibling gender. Heterogeneity analysis suggests that traditional cultural norms contribute to this disadvantage, and parental labor market integration substantially attenuates it. |
| Keywords: | Sibling spillovers, second-generation migrants, gender norms, school starting age |
| JEL: | I24 J13 J15 |
| Date: | 2026 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:diw:diwwpp:dp2178 |
| By: | Mizen, Paul; De Fraja, Gianni; Matheson, Jesse; Rockey, James; Taneja, Shivani; Thwaites, Gregory |
| Abstract: | This paper examines how the rise of working-from-home (WFH) affects compensation inequality. Using a novel survey, we find that the option to WFH is highly valued by workers (worth 8% of wages) but concentrated among higher earners, suggesting increased inequality. However, using a simple model where WFH and in-person workers are complements, we show that increased WFH leads to lower wages for WFH workers, potentially offsetting the benefits of WFH. Empirically, workers in WFH-capable occupations experienced 2–7% lower wage growth post-pandemic, consistent with the theory. Overall, we find no change in inequality but a substantial increase in compensation. |
| Keywords: | Remote working; Work-from-home; Inequality; Compensation; Pandemic; Perks |
| JEL: | J01 R12 |
| Date: | 2025–04–23 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:eoe:escoed:escoe-dp-2025-04 |
| By: | Joern Kleinert (University of Graz, Austria) |
| Abstract: | A match in the labor market results from a two-sided discrete choice of workers and firms. On the one side, heterogeneous workers choose to apply to firms' offers which correspond well to their abilities, education, training (all closely related to job seeker's occupation), interests, and job expectations. On the other side, heterogeneous firms choose from applications received their employees depending on their occupation or work experience, special skills, and expected fit into the existing team. Each side makes discrete choices. In this way, I model labor market search and matching with mismatches as one possible result. Labor market outcomes are thereby strongly affected by non-labor market influences, such as education decisions and sector shifts in the goods market. |
| Keywords: | Labor market matching, Wages, Occupational differentiation |
| JEL: | J24 J31 J64 |
| Date: | 2026–08 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:grz:wpaper:2026-16 |
| By: | Ellora Derenoncourt; Arindrajit Dube; Suresh Naidu; Heather Sarsons; Niharika Singh |
| Abstract: | Union growth has historically happened in spurts. We combine union election data from 1961–2025 with a large-scale information experiment involving 9, 000 low-wage workers to study the role of social learning in union growth. Observationally, close election wins cause future wins within state-industries. Experimentally, information about recent union wins increases union support and beliefs about co-worker support, with effects concentrated among workers with weak information environments and low baseline coworker support. In contrast, information about labor market tightness has little effect. Our results highlight social learning as a mechanism for union growth. |
| JEL: | J50 |
| Date: | 2026–08 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:35571 |
| By: | Beatrice Braut; Mariele Macaluso; Vincenzo Mollisi |
| Abstract: | Quiet quitting reflects a form of worker disaffection that operates along the intensive margin of labor supply rather than through job exit. We study how alternative workplace narratives shape workers' behavioral responses using a randomized survey experiment on a representative sample of employees in Italy and France. Respondents are exposed to empirically grounded moral framings of work emphasizing either social justice and collective rights or work organization and employment practices. We find that moral framings reallocate behavior across margins: justice-oriented narratives increase detachment while reducing passive disengagement, whereas organization-centered framing generates no systematic effects. |
| Date: | 2026–08 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:arx:papers:2608.27538 |
| By: | Paul Gompers; George Hu; Will Levinson; Sachin Srivastava |
| Abstract: | This paper examines how networks formed through college athletics influence the early-career trajectories of Ivy League graduates. Tracking professional histories of 120, 306 Ivy League graduates, we compare each graduate's actual first job against other potential jobs that the graduate could reasonably have taken. Athletics-based networks, especially team-based connections, materially influence initial job choice. Employing one additional alum from a specific Ivy League collegiate sports team increases the probability that a same-team athlete joins the firm by 193.70% relative to the baseline match probability. Likewise, employing one more Ivy League alum who played a specific Varsity sport increases the probability that any Ivy League athlete who plays the same sport joins the firm by 16.40%, while employing one more alum who played any sport at a specific Ivy League university raises the probability that any Ivy League athlete from the same university joins the firm by 4.60%. For team-based connections, these effects persist whether the alum and the college athlete were direct peers whose college years overlapped or older “network” affiliates whose college years were completely disjoint. Our results demonstrate that college athletics-based social networks materially influence initial job placement and early-career trajectories for top college graduates. More generally, they clarify how non-academic social capital shapes the job searching and matching process within labor markets. |
| JEL: | I23 J24 J38 J4 |
| Date: | 2026–07 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:35527 |
| By: | Gay, Victor; Milner, Benjamin |
| Abstract: | Combining district-level measures of World War I military fatalities with full-count census microdata, we show that wartime mortality increased postwar female labor force participation in England and Wales. Women shifted away from traditionally female occupations, while military deaths increased the shares of single and widowed women, whose participation rates were higher. Yet the overall effect of military mor-tality on postwar female labor force participation remained modest. A harmonized comparison with France suggests that stronger internal migration in England and Wales rapidly dissipated local marriage- and labor-market imbalances, while more generous pensions for war widows weakened their labor supply response. |
| Keywords: | World War I; Female labor force participation; England and Wales |
| JEL: | J16 J21 N33 N34 |
| Date: | 2026–09 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:tse:wpaper:132063 |
| By: | David Neumark; Emma Wohl |
| Abstract: | We provide the first direct estimates of the effects of minimum wages on low-wage workers in families at different points of the distribution of income-to-needs, using data from the Survey of Income and Program Participation, which oversamples low-income families. We find adverse – rather than beneficial – effects of minimum wages on the employment, hours, and earnings of initially-employed low-wage workers in poor and low-income families. Although we do not find a gradient indicating more adverse effects on the poorest low-wage workers, the adverse effects for poor and low-income low-wage workers help explain why minimum wages do not reduce poverty. |
| JEL: | J23 J38 |
| Date: | 2026–08 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:35628 |
| By: | Adam A. Dzulkipli; Nicole Black; David W. Johnston; Leonie Segal |
| Abstract: | Debate over the optimal school starting age has focused largely on children’s educa- tional and developmental outcomes, with little attention given to whether starting school earlier may protect vulnerable children from maltreatment. This paper examines that pos- sibility by exploiting a date-of-birth cut-off for school entry in Australia. We find that earlier school entry reduces the probability of a maltreatment notification from a non- education reporter by 4.3 percentage points or 50% relative to the mean. The reduction is driven largely by fewer police notifications and notifications involving emotional abuse. In contrast, notifications from education-sector reporters are unaffected overall, reflect- ing offsetting changes in notifications from preschool and school-based educators. The protective effects are concentrated among children without younger siblings and extend to older siblings, with the pattern of results suggesting that relaxed childcare constraints and increased maternal employment may be important mechanisms. |
| Keywords: | school entry, child maltreatment, child protection, regression discontinuity |
| JEL: | I21 I28 J13 |
| Date: | 2026–09–02 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:mhe:chemon:paper_1788311805474_394 |
| By: | Zixi Lei; Xiaomeng Chen; Wen Wen; Andrew Whinston |
| Abstract: | Remote work is a common practice of workplace flexibility enabled by digital infrastructure, yet its implications for firms' talent composition and organizational structure remain underexplored. This question is especially important for startups, which often operate with constraints in accessing talent through local labor markets. We focus on skill complementarity, a dimension of talent composition that is critical to startups' early-stage development. By integrating LinkedIn job postings, worker skills, and worker mobility data, we study the impact of remote work on skill complementarity in startups. We find that higher remote work intensity increases firm-level skill complementarity, primarily by helping startups recruit new workers whose skills better match the firms' hiring needs and diversify from the skill sets of existing employees. We further show that this shift in workforce composition carries organizational consequences: remote work is associated with greater organizational hierarchy through increased skill complementarity. These findings suggest that, for startups, remote work is not merely a flexibility policy but a hiring mechanism that helps young firms assemble complementary talent despite resource constraints. At the same time, this may push startups toward more hierarchical structures, which serve as formalized coordination mechanisms to effectively achieve the value of a more complementary workforce. |
| Date: | 2026–08 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:arx:papers:2608.02666 |
| By: | Michael Baker; Jonathan Gruber; Kevin S. Milligan |
| Abstract: | We provide new estimates of the effects of universal child care on the long-term labor outcomes of mothers, documenting the life-cycle impact of Quebec’s universal, subsidized child care program on maternal labor supply, earnings, social program benefit receipt and tax remittances. We find an enduring positive impact on mothers’ employment long after children have aged out of the preschool years. There is also a long-run impact on earnings which grows to be twice as large as the participation effect. This arises because of growth in the intensity of labor force participation and a rise in hourly wages over time, suggesting that initial investments in work have multiplier effects later in women’s careers. There is clear evidence of occupational upgrading but most of the growth is within occupation, including the impact of more labor market experience in the years after children are out of child care. We show that, as a result, tax remittances grow over the lifecycle, and social assistance and employment insurance receipts fall. Our estimate of the fiscal balance of these effects reveals that the net present value of the flow of fiscal benefits may recapture between 75 and 117 percent of the upfront costs of the program. |
| JEL: | H31 J13 J16 J24 |
| Date: | 2026–07 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:35514 |
| By: | Bergmann, Lea |
| Abstract: | Shorter working hours reflect a fundamental tension in modern labor mar- kets: They may increase the labor force participation of women and improve work-life balance, but may impose organizational costs on firms through co- ordination frictions and reduced scheduling flexibility. I examine a 2001 Ger- man reform that granted employees in firms with 16 or more employees the legal right to reduce working hours permanently. Using firm-level administra- tive data and a difference-in-discontinuities design around the 16-employee threshold, I find no evidence that the mandate alters firms' employee struc- ture. Moreover, it does not affect firms' business volume or hiring behavior. These null effects can be explained by firms already accommodating part-time requests before the reform. Overall, the results indicate that the mandate did not generate detectable distortions in employment or firm performance. |
| Abstract: | Teilzeitarbeit ist ein Spannungsfeld auf modernen Arbeitsmärkten: Sie kann die Erwerbsbeteiligung von Frauen erhöhen und die Vereinbarkeit von Beruf und Privatleben verbessern, jedoch potenziell organisatorische Kosten für Unternehmen verursachen, aufgrund von Koordinationsproblemen und weniger Flexibilität bei der Arbeitsplanung. Diese Studie untersucht eine deutsche Reform aus dem Jahr 2001, die Beschäftigten in Unternehmen mit 16 oder mehr Mitarbeitern das Recht einräumte, ihre Arbeitszeit dauerhaft zu verkürzen. Anhand von administrativen Daten auf Unternehmensebene und eines Difference-in-Discontinuities-Designs rund um die Schwelle von 16 Beschäftigten finden sich keine Hinweise darauf, dass die Vorschrift die Beschäftigungsstruktur der Unternehmen verändert. Darüber hinaus hat sie keinen Einfluss auf das Geschäftsvolumen oder die Neueinstellungen von Unternehmen. Diese Nulleffekte lassen sich dadurch erklären, dass die Unternehmen bereits vor der Reform Teilzeitwünsche gestattet haben. Insgesamt deuten die Ergebnisse darauf hin, dass ein Recht auf Teilzeitarbeit keine nachweisbaren Veränderungen bei der Beschäftigung oder dem Geschäftserfolg verursacht hat. |
| Keywords: | part-time, firms, labor regulation |
| JEL: | J16 J18 J22 J63 |
| Date: | 2026 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:zbw:rwirep:343040 |
| By: | Jonathan Hall; Jason Hicks; Morris M. Kleiner; Yun taek Oh |
| Abstract: | We examine whether occupational licensing improves service quality and safety using trip-level Uber data that include driver ratings and telematics-based measures of driving behavior. Exploiting quasi-random assignment from proximity-based dispatch, we compare trips served by licensed and unlicensed drivers in two settings: a cross-border comparison between New York City and New Jersey, and a deregulation event in Houston. Across settings and specifications, including instrumental variable estimates, we find no consistent evidence that licensing improves consumer outcomes. In Houston, post-deregulation entrants are indistinguishable from previously licensed drivers on ratings and driving behavior, despite differing markedly in experience and age. |
| JEL: | J0 J44 J48 J89 K29 L10 L8 |
| Date: | 2026–08 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:35635 |