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on Labour Economics |
| By: | Claudio Schilter; Thea S. Zoellner |
| Abstract: | Many firms in tight labor markets recruit for highly gender-segregated occupations, leaving them, in effect, drawing from only half the potential labor pool. We study how firms can use fringe benefits to attract workers and influence occupational choice. Unlike occupation-specific recruiting strategies, fringe benefits can be added to any occupation; they are also easily tailored, implemented, and scaled. Using a personalized and incentivized discrete choice experiment, we present participants with job options that match their skills and work task preferences. Within each option, we vary salary, occupation, and fringe benefits that adolescents had classified as gender-neutral, male-typed, or female-typed. We find that fringe benefits are highly valued: their effect is around a third as large as having prior interest in the occupation. Neutral and stereotypical benefits in particular improve perceptions of the firm across multiple dimensions. Furthermore, we find substantial gender differences. Female-typed benefits deter male participants, whereas all other benefit-participant combinations have a positive effect. Female participants value benefits more when those benefits are paired with an atypical occupation, and we find suggestive evidence that this reflects benefits alleviating concerns about limited support in such roles. In addition, male-typed benefits can increase the attractiveness of gender-atypical occupations for female participants. Female participants who consider atypical occupations place relatively higher value on these benefits and tend to exhibit less traditionally feminine preferences. We also find suggestive evidence that anticipated social reactions, particularly from parents, accompany these choices. |
| Keywords: | occupational choice, fringe benefits, gender |
| JEL: | J20 J24 J28 J16 |
| Date: | 2026–09 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iso:educat:0259 |
| By: | Benghalem, Hélène (University of Lausanne); Bächli, Mirjam (University of Lausanne); Tinello, Doriana (Univeristy of Geneva); Zuber, Sascha (University of Geneva); Cherubini, Mauro (University of Lausanne); Aschwanden, Damaris (University of Geneva); Kliegel, Matthias (University of Geneva); Lalive, Rafael (University of Lausanne); Pellizzari, Michele (University of Geneva) |
| Abstract: | Cognition is likely to be important for job search, but its role is not yet well understood. We study an online field experiment with jobseekers registered at the Swiss public employment services. Participants were randomly assigned to an online cognitive training program designed to strengthen core cognitive abilities and transversal cognitive abilities relevant for job search. Combining administrative and survey data on employment and earnings, we find that access to cognitive training substantially increases employment rates and earnings while reducing reliance on transfer income. In a simple search model, these findings could arise when cognition improves search effectiveness leading to lower search effort but higher chances of employment. |
| Keywords: | unemployment, online job search, cognitive training |
| JEL: | J64 J62 C93 |
| Date: | 2026–08 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp18886 |
| By: | Leonard Goff; Simon Quach |
| Abstract: | Most unemployment insurance (UI) systems condition the potential duration of benefits on claimants' work history, yet little evidence exists on whether doing so is socially optimal. We study this question using 25 regression discontinuities in Canada's UI system, where benefit duration increases discretely when prior hours worked crosses various thresholds. Using administrative records covering the universe of UI claims from 1997 to 2018, we estimate the fiscal effects of extending potential duration across the work-history distribution. On average, an additional week lengthens unemployment by 0.30 weeks and costs the government $96. However, this average effect masks significant heterogeneity: the mechanical cost falls steeply with prior hours, while the behavioral cost increases modestly. Consequently, the fiscal externality of extending UI rises with labor market attachment. Embedding these estimates in a sufficient statistics framework, we find that the fiscal externality of a uniform extension is 76% larger than that of an extension targeted at claimants with short histories. Moreover, aggregate welfare can be raised at zero fiscal cost by redistributing benefits from high to low hour claimants. |
| JEL: | H53 J64 J65 |
| Date: | 2026–07 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:35524 |
| By: | Banerjee, Souvik (IIT Bombay); Jaiswal, Preeti (IIT Bombay); Mukhopadhyay, Sankar (University of Nevada, Reno) |
| Abstract: | Using nationally representative data from the Annual Survey of Industries, we examine the effects of India’s Maternity Benefit (Amendment) Act, 2017, which extends the paid maternity leave from 12 weeks to 26 weeks on firms’ hiring decisions and gender-specific employment outcomes. We use the institutional variation of the policy mandate, which applies only to firms with 10 or more employees, to define treatment and control firms. Our results reveal that firms respond to the mandate primarily through labour substitution, i.e., replacing female workers with male workers rather than bearing the increased cost of female employment. We find a decline of 8.4% in female workers and 9.5% in female mandays worked, accompanied by an increase of 2.6% in male workers and 2.1% in male mandays. This substitution is concentrated in industries with high female employment shares, while firms in low female-share industries show no female employment effects but exhibit positive spillovers to male wages. Firm output and profit are unaffected, indicating that male workers serve as effective production substitutes. These findings imply well-intentioned maternity leave policies can inadvertently reinforce gender labour market disparities. |
| Keywords: | maternity benefit, female labour, employment |
| JEL: | J13 J33 J31 |
| Date: | 2026–08 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp18888 |
| By: | Dániel Horn (Corvinus University of Budapest; ELTE Centre for Economic and Regional Studies); Rita Pető (ELTE Centre for Economic and Regional Studies) |
| Abstract: | Maternal job loss may deepen educational inequality by disrupting children’s schooling at critical transition points. Using linked Hungarian administrative and educational data, we compare children whose mothers experience sustained non-employment after grade 6 with those whose mothers experience it only after grade 10. Maternal job loss increases school dropout by 4.3 percentage points, relative to a mean of 6.7 percent. Its average effect on maturity-track enrollment is largely associated with increased dropout rather than track reallocation among enrolled students. The larger adverse effects observed in the top baseline maternal earnings tertile provide suggestive support for a financial mechanism, while the smaller maturity-track effects among children of more-educated mothers are consistent with a compensatory role for parental resources. |
| Keywords: | maternal job loss; school dropout; secondary-school track choice; parental education; intergenerational mobility; linked administrative data; difference-in-differences; Hungary |
| JEL: | I21 I24 J13 J62 J64 C21 |
| Date: | 2026–08 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:has:discpr:2610 |
| By: | Vittoria Dicandia; Silvia Vannutelli |
| Abstract: | We study how firms and workers adjust when previously restricted migrants gain full and portable work rights in a labor market with substantial informality. We exploit the 2007 EU accession of Bulgaria and Romania, which granted unrestricted work rights to Italy's largest migrant group. Using matched employer–employee administrative data and an IV-DID design, we find that firms suddenly and persistently shift employment composition toward EU07 workers, compressing the native employment share without reducing native hiring or increasing separations. We don't detect any significant change in wages for either natives or EU07 workers. For migrants, this null effect reflects offsetting compositional shifts as newly observed and incumbent EU07 workers enter the formal workforce with different wage trajectories. Consistent with a shift in bargaining power toward workers, EU07 migrants experienced significant gains in job mobility and job security. Overall, the evidence suggests that removing legal restrictions reshaped firms’ personnel choices and altered migrants’ employment relationships, improving their outside options, bargaining position, and access to more secure jobs. |
| JEL: | J61 |
| Date: | 2026–07 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:35493 |
| By: | Deutscher, Nathan (Australian National University); Siminski, Peter (University of Technology Sydney) |
| Abstract: | We contribute to understanding the causal mechanisms of intergenerational welfare persistence. We study veterans’ pensions, leveraging Australia’s Vietnam-era draft lotteries for identification and over three decades of administrative data with universal coverage. Deployed service increased veterans’ expected welfare receipt by 7.5 years (100.5%) and reduced employment (3.2 years; 30.2%). Effects for veterans’ spouses were qualitatively similar and approximately half as large. How did this affect their children? Despite high statistical power, we find almost no lasting effects on child outcomes, including welfare, employment, income, education, partnering and fertility. Direct estimates of causal intergenerational welfare elasticities are precise zeros, highlighting that welfare receipthttps://legacy.iza.org/en/webcontent/personnel/photos/personal_menu does not always spill over to the next generation. |
| Keywords: | intergenerational mobility, welfare dependency, veterans’ benefits, disability pensions, conscription, labour supply |
| JEL: | H53 H55 H56 I38 J22 J62 |
| Date: | 2026–08 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp18876 |
| By: | Jarkko Harju; Toni Juuti; Tuomas Matikka |
| Abstract: | Using full-population data from Finland, we show that individuals at the top of the income distribution are significantly more likely to start new incorporated businesses. High-income earners also establish more successful and productive businesses than others. In contrast, parental income is not linked with selection into new entrepreneurship or firm-level outcomes. We find that income gains from entrepreneurship are rather similar across individual and parental characteristics, and that entrepreneurship is associated with upward income mobility regardless of initial income levels. Overall, our findings suggest that entrepreneurship can serve as an upward economic ladder for individuals from diverse backgrounds. |
| Keywords: | entrepreneurship, income mobility, productivity |
| JEL: | L26 J24 J3 |
| Date: | 2026–01–15 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pst:wpaper:358 |
| By: | Felix Kersting (HU Berlin); Iris Wohnsiedler (Trinity College Dublin, Economic and Social Research Institute) |
| Abstract: | This paper studies how collective bargaining institutions emerged from competition within the labor movement. We draw on newly assembled data on strikes, union membership, and bargaining agreements at the county-occupation level in Imperial Germany around 1900. Three rival factions competed for control of the labor movement: the social-democratic Free Trade Unions, the radical unions, and the moderate unions, divided over whether to confront employers, negotiate with them, or both. The Free Trade Unions struck more effectively than the radical unions and bargained far more than the moderate ones. Instrumenting Free Trade Union strength with distance to their headquarters, we show that stronger organization raised the likelihood that agreements emerged. Strike activity rose ahead of first agreements and fell thereafter. The effect is concentrated in multi-employer agreements with peace obligations, the bargaining form that later defined the German model. Organized employers played little part in this process. Durable bargaining institutions emerged where a movement could both sustain conflict and commit to settling it. |
| Keywords: | labor conflict; collective bargaining agreement; unions; endogenous institutions; |
| JEL: | N33 J51 J52 D72 |
| Date: | 2026–07–30 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:rco:dpaper:581 |
| By: | Tirza J. Angerhofer; Allan Collard-Wexler; Matthew C. Weinberg |
| Abstract: | Employers facing limited labor market competition may suppress wages below socially optimal levels. Unions can counteract wage suppression through collective bargaining, though they may also push wages above the socially optimal level and lead to job rationing. We estimate a structural model of labor supply, labor demand, and Nash-in-Nash bargaining over wages between local teacher unions and school districts in Pennsylvania’s K-12 public school system from 2013 to 2019. We compare negotiated equilibrium wages and employment to oligopsony wage posting and social planner scenarios. On average, oligopsony reduces wages 7 percent below the social optimum, while collective bargaining raises wages 8 percent above it. Averages mask substantial district-level heterogeneity driven by bargaining power variation. Twenty-eight percent of school districts have salaries lower when public schools are unionized than when they are not due to cross-district externalities, where high salaries at one school cause hiring reductions that increase labor supply elsewhere. |
| JEL: | J31 J42 J45 J51 L13 |
| Date: | 2026–07 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:35476 |
| By: | Toni Juuti |
| Abstract: | I explore the origins of the positive association between socio-economic background and entrepreneurship. Using Finnish administrative data, I show that children from the top 1% of the parental income distribution are more than five times as likely to become business owners and almost three times as likely to become “real entrepreneurs”, who found new firms, as those from the bottom 50%. Similar patterns appear when using parental wealth instead of income, though the effects are somewhat smaller in magnitude. The strongest channel behind the over-representation of entrepreneurs from high-income families is prior experience of business ownership before founding new firms. I rationalize this finding by developing an “ownership ladder” model, where entrepreneurship is the second step on the ladder, and parental resources are associated with people stepping onto that ladder early. Furthermore, there are distinctive differences in the industries of the new firms by entrepreneurs’ parental background, which suggests that coming from prosperous origins is positively associated with human capital that provides entrepreneurial opportunities. The socio-economic background of entrepreneurs appears only weakly related to the initial equity of new firms, suggesting that liquidity constraints are not especially important. Nor can the selection pattern be explained by income shifting or shell companies. The performance of firms and the personal income development of entrepreneurs differ only slightly by socio-economic background. However, since business owners and entrepreneurs tend to earn much more than wage earners or the unincorporated self-employed, the highly non-linear selection patterns have major implications for intergenerational income mobility. |
| Keywords: | entrepreneurship, socio-economic background |
| JEL: | G51 J24 L26 |
| Date: | 2026–03–19 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pst:wpaper:360 |
| By: | Devos, Louise (Ghent University); Lippens, Louis (Ghent University); Baert, Stijn (Ghent University) |
| Abstract: | Religious discrimination in hiring is rarely studied independently from ethnic discrimination. We fill this gap using a preregistered factorial survey experiment in which professional recruiters evaluate candidate profiles that independently vary by ethnic majority versus minority names, visual religious signals, and volunteering activities signalling either Christian or Muslim religious affiliation. Beyond hiring intentions, we measure recruiters’, colleagues’, and customers’ anticipated willingness to work with candidates, as well as recruiters’ HEXACO personality assessments of the candidates. Candidates whose religious position recruiters identify receive lower interview ratings than candidates whose position remains unclear to them, and this penalty does not differ between Christian, Muslim, and atheist attributions; interview propensity declines further as attributed religiosity rises; and among the assigned signals, only religious volunteering reduces hiring chances. Religious candidates are not regarded as less diligent or less honest, but as less likely to be accepted by others. |
| Keywords: | religion, hiring, discrimination, factorial survey experiment |
| JEL: | C83 J61 J71 |
| Date: | 2026–09 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp18906 |
| By: | Alejandro Puerta-Cuartas |
| Abstract: | Measuring the intergenerational transmission of lifetime economic status is complicated by researchers often only observing snapshots of income at specific ages. Consequently, standard practice estimates intergenerational mobility using income averages, introducing life-cycle bias that compromises reliability and comparability across studies, time, and place. I develop a missing data framework that exploits available income data and observable characteristics to eliminate life-cycle bias. This method combines nonparametric identification with Neyman-orthogonal moments to construct debiased machine learning estimators for intergenerational income mobility measures under plausible missing-at-random and testable independence assumptions. I apply this framework to estimate the intergenerational elasticity for the U.S. using the Panel Study of Income Dynamics across birth cohorts from 1954 to 1977 with rolling 10-year windows. While existing approaches estimate values between 0.41 and 0.54, the proposed method yields substantially higher estimates ranging from 0.6 to 0.7, averaging 0.64. These results align closely with recent evidence using long time averages over mid-career periods, reinforcing high U.S. intergenerational persistence. |
| Date: | 2026–09 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:arx:papers:2609.04994 |
| By: | Nozaki, Yuko |
| Abstract: | When a school day disappears, who absorbs it? This paper observes the complete same-day time accounts of children and both parents around Japan's transition to a five-day school week. Under the biweekly regime of 2001, the national time-use survey administratively assigned households to adjacent school and no-school Saturdays, shifting attendance by 40 percentage points; the identical calendar positions in 2006 provide a placebo after the full abolition of Saturday classes in 2002. Mothers' daily market work is a precise zero: equivalence tests reject effects larger than 11 minutes, or 0.06 of a control standard deviation. Children aged ten and older absorb the half-day instead-a child induced to attend loses 58 minutes of sleep, along with television and family time-while fathers work about 25 minutes more. Prefecture-level reduced forms scale with the local first stage while intercepts are indistinguishable from zero, consistent with an attendance channel. After abolition, the baseline comparison shows mothers' Saturday participation falling 4.1 percentage points relative to women aged 25-59 without coresident children under 16; exact age standardization leaves a similar 3.3-point reform-interval estimate with lower precision. School childcare is capitalized into standing arrangements that adjust over longer horizons rather than expressed through mothers' day-to-day labor supply. |
| Keywords: | parental labor supply, childcare, school schedules, time use, children's sleep, intrahousehold allocation |
| JEL: | J22 J13 D13 |
| Date: | 2026 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:zbw:glodps:1808 |
| By: | Khan, Akib (Department of Economics, Stockholm School of Economics); Lundberg, Erik (Department of Economics, Uppsala University) |
| Abstract: | Aging populations and labor shortages in skill-intensive sectors have led many countries to pursue targeted policies to attract international talent. We study a migration reform in Sweden that offered international doctoral students from outside the EU an easier path to permanent residency. Implemented in 2014, the reform shortened the required period of residence from eight to four years, allowed these students to obtain permanent residency immediately after graduation, and granted their spouses a work permit during their doctoral studies. Using the European students as a comparison group in a difference-in-differences design, we find that the treated international students are 10.5 pp (18%) more likely to stay in Sweden three years after graduation. Higher settlement prospects also increase their language investments and marriage rates during the PhD. These effects are larger for cohorts that have longer exposure to the reform and for those who carry out their doctoral research in STEM. In addition, the reform raises both employment and language investments among the partners of the treated international students. Taken together, the policy increases permanent residency among international graduates as well as leads them and their families to make long-term choices conducive to integration. Finally, using a shift-share design, where we combine the reform with the pre-existing variation in the share of international students across research fields, we find positive peer effects on residency. More international students settling in Sweden increases the probability of their European peers making the same choice. |
| Keywords: | permanent residency; skilled immigration; international doctoral students; language acquisition; family formation; Sweden |
| JEL: | F22 I23 J12 J24 J61 K37 |
| Date: | 2026–08–21 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hhs:ifauwp:2026_015 |
| By: | Sebastian Koenigs (OECD); Javier Terrero-Davila (OECD) |
| Abstract: | Income mobility is often invoked as a counterweight to slow income growth and high inequality, yet conclusions on who benefits from mobility depend on the part of the income distribution examined and the metric used. Drawing on harmonised administrative records from Austria, Belgium, Estonia and Spain, we combine relative and absolute mobility metrics to study disposable income dynamics for working-age individuals along the distribution between 2017 and 2022. Those at the bottom experience markedly different income growth across countries, while those at the top experience homogeneous declines. Rank persistence varies substantially across countries, from 0.64 in Estonia to 0.79 in Spain, but top incomes are highly persistent everywhere, largely insulated from country-specific mobility dynamics. Mobility gaps by age, gender, education and place of residence also change in sign and magnitude depending on people’s starting point in the distribution. We show that different metrics can give conflicting assessments of where mobility is more favourable for those at the bottom, and that these differences are largely explained by countries' levels of inequality and aggregate income growth: more unequal or higher-growth countries need more progressive income growth to deliver comparable positional mobility and narrowing of absolute income gaps. |
| Keywords: | Income mobility; income inequality; income growth; administrative records |
| JEL: | D31 D63 H24 I30 |
| Date: | 2026–09 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:inq:inqwps:ecineq2026-698 |
| By: | Lauro Carnicelli |
| Abstract: | Parental and paternity leave policies have been used in developed countries to promote gender equality and curb the child penalty. However, these policies have a direct impact on how housework and childcare are organized within the household. Given the decline in fertility rates and the rise of single-parent households. I examine how the expansion and flexibilization of paternity leave affect union stability and future fertility. This study uses Finnish registry and social security data in a regression discontinuity setting to answer this question. The child’s due date is used as the running variable because it cannot be precisely manipulated by parents. Four paternity leave reforms from the 2000s are analyzed. Each reform introduced different changes regarding leave-entitlement expansion, flexibility, and benefit-replacement rate. Results suggest that flexibility is important for leave take-up. The most flexible reform, from 2010, increased the duration of paternity leave. It had a positive impact on fertility and a transient increase in union stability for individuals younger than 30 years. |
| Keywords: | Paternity leave, Fertility, Marriage, Union Stability |
| JEL: | J12 J13 |
| Date: | 2025–10–23 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pst:wpaper:356 |
| By: | N. Meltem Daysal; Camille JH. Fredrickson; Ida L. Kristiansen; Mircea Trandafir; Jonathan Zhang |
| Abstract: | We estimate the causal impacts of GLP-1 treatment on labor market outcomes using linked Danish administrative data and a matched stacked difference-in-differences design. We compare patients who initiate GLP-1 treatment during the first two years of Semaglutide availability to observably similar patients who initiate four years later. We find that GLP-1 treatment reduces long-term sickness leave by 17.3%. We estimate total fiscal benefits of GLP-1 initiation of approximately 1.3–1.5% of annual labor income per employed individual. We do not detect statistically significant or economically meaningful impacts on income, labor force participation, or employment over four years. |
| JEL: | H51 I1 I12 |
| Date: | 2026–07 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:35475 |