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on Labour Economics |
| By: | Jeff Larrimore; David Splinter |
| Abstract: | Circulation into and out of the top one percent is pronounced in the U.S. One third exit after a year and two-thirds exit after a decade. This mobility lowers top income shares when shifting from annual to multi-year income measures. Intragenerational mobility over two decades lowers recent top one percent fiscal income shares by over 10 percent. Two-decade mobility reduces top 0.1% shares by over 20 percent, top 0.01% shares by 30 percent, and top 0.001% shares by 40 percent. Effects of variability on wealth inequality are similar in magnitude, although more modest as a share of top wealth inequality. |
| Keywords: | wealth; distribution; personal income; wage inequality |
| JEL: | D31 D63 H20 |
| Date: | 2026–03–06 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:fip:fedgfe:102904 |
| By: | Clara Schäper; Katharina Wrohlich; Sabine Zinn |
| Abstract: | Many countries use job-retention schemes, such as short-time work (STW), to stabilize the labor market during economic downturns. While these schemes might prevent unemployment (UE) and its adverse effects on workers, STW could also deter workers from moving to more productive firms, thereby negatively affecting their labor market outcomes in the long run. We analyze the long-term effects of STW and UE on individual workers using survey data from the SOEP for 1984–2023, which allows us to examine a broad set of yearly measured outcome variables, including employment, weekly working hours, real hourly wages, time spent on unpaid care work and life satisfaction. For the empirical analysis, we employ a two-step procedure that includes propensity score matching and an event-study model with individual fixed effects. Our findings suggest that, in the German institutional context, STW had no significant negative effects on workers’ labor market outcomes in the financial crisis of 2008/2009 and the economic crisis caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. This suggests that STW did not deter workers from switching to more productive firms. For the economic crisis following German reunification in the 1990s, however, we find that STW negatively affects workers’ long-term outcomes, albeit less strongly than episodes of UE. These findings suggest that the stabilizing effect of STW strongly depends on the economic context. |
| Keywords: | labor market shocks, job loss, short-time work, unemployment, event-study analysis |
| JEL: | H31 E32 J13 J16 J22 |
| Date: | 2026 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:diw:diwwpp:dp2160 |
| By: | Samuel Berlinski; Michele Giannola; Alessandro Toppeta |
| Abstract: | We study the relative effectiveness, cost-effectiveness, and interaction of family- and school-based learning interventions using a randomized controlled trial in Colombia that assigns children to a parental engagement program, a teacher professional development program, both, or a control group. Both interventions are grounded in a child-centered learning approach that emphasizes active engagement and the progression from informal to formal mathematical understanding. Each intervention independently generates sizable and statistically similar gains in early numeracy (0.17SD and 0.20SD). Combining them produces no additional learning gains, suggesting that the two interventions act as substitutes over the time horizon and skill domain we study. When benefits accruing to future cohorts are taken into account, the teacher development program becomes at least as cost-effective as, and potentially more cost-effective than, the parental engagement intervention. Our results suggest that, in this setting, strategically concentrating resources on a single binding constraint -- either at home or in school -- maximizes the short-run learning gains per dollar spent. |
| Keywords: | families, schools, human capital |
| JEL: | A2 H52 I25 |
| Date: | 2026 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ces:ceswps:_12563 |
| By: | Cyprien Batut; Caroline Coly; Sarah Schneider-Strawczynski |
| Abstract: | This paper investigates the impact of the #MeToo movement in the workplace, drawing on French survey data on harassment behaviours and administrative data on worker flows. Using a difference-in-differences strategy, we find that, following the #MeToo movement, women began leaving high-risk workplaces at a significantly higher rate. This increase is mainly driven by women who quit their jobs. Both men and women who exit high-risk plants subsequently adjust their job search strategies toward less toxic workplaces. |
| Keywords: | sexual harassment, occupational gender inequality, workflows |
| JEL: | J16 D7 J81 J52 |
| Date: | 2026 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ces:ceswps:_12551 |
| By: | Marie Boltz; Monserrat Bustelo; Ana María Díaz; Agustina Suaya |
| Abstract: | We study whether pluralistic ignorance about societal and spousal support for maternal employment sustains gender gaps in women’s labour-market outcomes. Using a representative sample of 1, 732 cohabiting couples with young children in Bogotá, we document near-universal first-order support for working mothers but substantial underestimation of others’ support, especially that of fathers, and frequent misperceptions of the partner’s views. We then implement a randomised information intervention that delivers personalised feedback on prevailing local attitudes toward maternal employment. The intervention narrows key second-order belief gaps about community and spousal support, while leaving first-order attitudes essentially unchanged. Treated men are more likely than control men to nominate their wife rather than themselves for a career-building course. One to two months later, treated women report more intensive job search and treated men place greater weight on work–family balance. Effects are concentrated among women who are already active in the labour market, underscoring both the potential and the limits of norm-correcting information in a context with high support for women’s work but large misperceptions |
| Keywords: | Gender norms, Female Employment, Pluralistic ignorance, RCT. |
| JEL: | J16 J21 D91 C93 |
| Date: | 2026 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ulp:sbbeta:2026-08 |
| By: | Sofie Cairo; Ria Ivandic; Anne Sophie Lassen; Valentina Tartari |
| Abstract: | Persistent gender gaps in the labor market are largely driven by the underrepresentation of women at the top of most professions. We study how parenthood shapes gender gaps in academic careers using population-wide administrative and survey data linked to productivity and promotion records. Parenthood marks a sharp divergence in academic careers: one in three women exit academia following motherhood. Men also experience a decline in academic employment after fatherhood, but the effects are substantially smaller. For mothers, childbirth leads to a persistent decline in both tenure attainment and research output, while men's trajectories on these margins are unaffected by parenthood. The child penalty on tenure is driven primarily by women's higher exit rates from academia. Gender differences in career aspirations do not explain these findings; instead, childcare and mobility constraints play a central role. Child penalties are exacerbated in highly competitive environments and environments without senior female role models. |
| Keywords: | gender, labour, academic, careers, child care, penalty |
| Date: | 2026–03–16 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cep:cepdps:dp2160 |
| By: | István Boza (ELTE Centre for Economic and Regional Studies); Dániel Horn (Corvinus University Budapest; ELTE Centre for Economic and Regional Studies) |
| Abstract: | This paper introduces a framework that combines a traditional Mincer wage equation with an Abowd–Kramarz–Margolis (AKM) decomposition in a unified linear framework. The approach allows pre-labor market entry group-level factors to be mapped transparently onto the underlying channels of wage determination, including individual earning capacity, firm sorting, and occupational allocation. Applying the method to linked employer–employee administrative data from Hungary, we study how secondary schools are related to early-career wage inequality. Secondary school affiliation explains about 15% of wage variation among young workers, with a substantial share operating through sorting into firms and occupations. Controlling for completed educational attainment reduces school effects. However, these effects do not disappear completely and persist even after controlling for pre-existing differences in student pools measured around the age of 14-15. More broadly, the framework provides a general tool for studying how institutions shape labor-market outcomes through multiple economic channels. |
| Keywords: | wage inequality, school effects, AKM decomposition, Mincer equation, employer–employee linked data, labor market outcomes |
| JEL: | J31 J24 I26 C32 |
| Date: | 2026–03 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:has:discpr:2604 |
| By: | Ha Nguyen; Chapman, Bruce; Huong Le; Royer, Heather; Dearden, Lorraine; Mitrou, Francis |
| Abstract: | This study leverages whole-of-population linked census-administrative data to examine gender gaps in educational outcomes from early primary school through early adulthood in Australia and to assess the contribution of socioeconomic factors to these gaps. We find that females outperform males from as early as ages 5-6 across multiple developmental domains, and this advantage persists through university. The gender gap in favour of females is larger among lower-performing students. These findings are robust across population-wide analyses as well as sibling- and twin-based designs. We also find that boys benefit more than girls from growing up in more advantaged families, particularly among academically lower-performing boys. However, this advantage is observed only for outcomes measured in the early years of primary school. By contrast, for outcomes measured at the tertiary level, most indicators of socioeconomic advantage confer stronger benefits to females, especially among individuals at the lower end of the educational attainment distribution. Finally, we identify gender differences across siblings in school sector choice and early childhood health conditions, both favouring females, as potential mechanisms underlying these patterns. |
| Keywords: | Education, Gender Gap, Socioeconomic Status, Administrative data, Census, Australia |
| JEL: | I24 J13 J15 J16 J62 R23 |
| Date: | 2026 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:zbw:glodps:1725 |
| By: | Paolo Brunori; Diego del Pozo; H. Xavier Jara; Lorena Moreno |
| Abstract: | Integrating administrative data from the civil registry, social security, and national censuses, we provide novel evidence on intergenerational income mobility and equality of opportunity among 514, 890 formal workers in Ecuador. Our results show substantial intergenerational mobility (rank-rank slope 0.22, elasticity 0.17). Formal employment substantially equalizes mobility: gender differences are minimal, and ethnic disparities are compressed, although ethnic minorities face barriers at the bottom. |
| Keywords: | Intergenerational Mobility, Equality of opportunity, Labour income, Machine learning |
| Date: | 2026 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:unu:wpaper:wp-2026-30 |
| By: | Chirowodza, Joe |
| Abstract: | This paper examines gendered mobility patterns for early career workers, focusing on family motivated job changes. Using the Swiss Household Panel data (1999-2023) we use multinomial logit, fixed effects, and event study models to understand the impact of family related job mobility on early career workers. The paper shows that compared to men; women are more likely to cite family reasons for job change. Women who change jobs for family reasons face wage stagnation although they earn improvements in specific satisfaction dimensions whilst overall job satisfaction is lower as compared to career motivated job mobility. We also find that job mobility rates for mothers remain constant around childbirth and among mothers who change jobs, family considerations emerge reactively post birth. The results have policy implications for early career job mobility which include subsiding childcare, standardizing flexibility at work and increasing paternity leave periods. |
| Keywords: | Job mobility, Early career, family motivated mobility, gendered mobility patterns, job satisfaction |
| JEL: | J13 J24 J62 |
| Date: | 2026–01–21 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pra:mprapa:127809 |
| By: | Rita Pető (HUN-REN Centre for Economic and Regional Studies) |
| Abstract: | This paper examines how foreign direct investment (FDI) influences the gender wage gap, using matched employer-employee data from Hungary between 2003 and 2017. I find that foreign-owned firms exhibit a 4 percentage points larger within-firm gender wage gap compared to domestic firms, even after accounting for worker- and firm-level selection. This gap persists even after foreign capital withdraws, suggesting a lasting structural imprint. Furthermore, the results highlight the role of cultural norms: subsidiaries of companies from countries with more favorable economic opportunities for women show significantly smaller gender disparities. Greater wage-setting flexibility is also associated with a wider gender wage gap, especially among new hires. Overall, the study demonstrates that foreign ownership not only affects wage structures through economic channels but also transmits cultural norms that shape gender inequality in the labor market. |
| Keywords: | gender inequality, wage inequality, foreign-owned firms |
| JEL: | J16 J31 M52 F23 |
| Date: | 2025–06 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:has:discpr:2509 |
| By: | David Autor; Caroline Chin; Anna M. Salomons; Bryan Seegmiller |
| Abstract: | We study the role of expertise in new work–novel occupational roles that emerge as technological and economic conditions evolve–using newly available 1940 and 1950 Census Complete Count files and confidential American Community Survey data from 2011-2023. We show that new work is systematically distinct from simply more work in existing occupations in four respects. First, it attracts workers with distinct characteristics: new work is disproportionately performed by younger and more educated workers, even within detailed occupation-industry cells. Second, new work commands economically significant wage premiums that persist beyond workers' initial entry into new work, consistent with returns to scarce, specialized expertise rather than temporary market disequilibrium. Third, these premiums decline across vintages as expertise diffuses, with 'newer' new work commanding larger premiums than older new work. Fourth, the emergence of new work can be traced to specific demand shocks in particular locations and time periods, suggesting that expertise formation responds systematically to economic opportunities. These findings suggest that new work serves as a countervailing force to automation-driven job displacement not merely by creating additional employment, but also by generating new domains of human expertise that command market premiums. This expertise-based mechanism helps explain both the expanding variety of work activities across decades and the historical resilience of the labor share. |
| JEL: | E24 J11 J23 |
| Date: | 2026–03 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:34986 |
| By: | Niklas Engbom; Aniket Baksy; Daniele Caratelli |
| Abstract: | We quantify how structural changes in the U.S. labor market have contributed to wage stagnation over the past four decades by weakening the job ladder. Using Current Population Survey microdata from 1982–2023 and a partial-equilibrium job-ladder model, we estimate that employed workers today are about half as likely to receive a better-paying outside offer as they were in the 1980s. This decline is unlikely to reflect less efficient matching, weaker labor demand, or changes in workers' acceptance behavior. Instead, cross-state variation is consistent with rising employer concentration and the growing use of noncompete agreements having curtailed opportunities for job shopping. In a general equilibrium version of the model, we find that these changes have reduced annual real wage growth by 0.68 percentage points—roughly one-third of the post-1980 slowdown—with about two-thirds of the effect operating through equilibrium wage setting rather than mechanical reallocation. |
| JEL: | E2 J31 J62 |
| Date: | 2026–03 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:34981 |
| By: | Aarifah Razak |
| Abstract: | This paper examines the geography of intergenerational income mobility in South Africa across districts and metropolitan municipalities as well as historically disadvantaged former-homelands. South Africa's high inequality has a geographical dimension (spatial inequality), shaped by a long history of spatially implemented discrimination. Consequently, with the degree of disparate development and access to resources, where children grow up in South Africa strongly influences their prospects. |
| Keywords: | Intergenerational Mobility, Income, Spatial inequality, Instrumental variable, South Africa |
| Date: | 2026 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:unu:wpaper:wp-2026-25 |
| By: | Mariagrazia Cavallo; Elizabeth Dhuey; Luca Fumarco; Levi Halewyck; Simon ter Meulen |
| Abstract: | This article reviews the growing literature on age at school entry and its effects over the life course. Age at school entry affects a broad range of outcomes, including education, labor-market performance, health, social relationships, and family formation. We synthesize the evidence using a conceptual framework that distinguishes four empirically intertwined components of age at school entry: starting age, age at outcome, relative age, and time in school. Within this framework, we highlight six key channels through which age at school entry operates. While the effects of age at school entry are often substantial and persistent, many studies estimate bundled impacts without isolating specific components or directly measuring underlying mechanisms. We explain how different research designs capture distinct combinations of these components. We also highlight how institutional heterogeneity and behavioral responses can complicate the interpretation of results. We conclude by outlining directions for future research and policy design. |
| Keywords: | age at school entry, Relative age, School starting age, Institutional heterogeneity, Behavioral responses |
| JEL: | I12 I21 I24 I31 J12 J13 J24 K42 |
| Date: | 2026 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ces:ceswps:_12545 |
| By: | Olympia Bover; Alessandro Ruggieri; Carlos Sanz; Yuliya Kulikova; Nezih Guner |
| Abstract: | Family-friendly policies aim to help women balance work and family life, encouraging them to participate in the labor market. How effective are such policies in increasing fertility? We answer this question using a search model of the labor market where firms make hiring, promotion, and firing decisions, taking into account how these decisions affect workers' fertility incentives and labor force participation decisions. We estimate the model using administrative data from Spain, a country with very low fertility and a highly regulated labor market. We use the model to study family-friendly policies and demonstrate that firms' reactions result in a trade-off: policies that increase fertility reduce women's participation in the labor market and lower their lifetime earnings. |
| Keywords: | family-friendly policies, fertility, flexibility, gender gaps, Human Capital Accumulation, search and matching, welfare |
| JEL: | E24 J08 J13 J18 |
| Date: | 2026–03 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:bge:wpaper:1568 |
| By: | Theodore J. Joyce; Mina Afrouzi Khosroshahi; Sarah Truelsch; Kerstin Gentsch; Kyle Du |
| Abstract: | Recent studies of Ivy-Plus institutions suggest that standardized test scores (SAT/ACT) are far better predictors of college success than high school grade point average (HS-GPA), prompting a return to the requirement that test scores be submitted for admission at elite colleges. We ask whether re-establishing the SAT requirement for admission at a large urban public university system would improve the predictability of academic outcomes. Using administrative data for the 2010-2019 first-year cohorts, we update earlier work of students from public universities as to the relative predictive power of HSGPA and SAT scores on first-year outcomes and graduation rates. Contrary to findings at elite private institutions, we find that HSGPA is the dominant predictor of academic success in this public system. A one-standard-deviation increase in HSGPA is four to six times more predictive of six-year graduation than a comparable increase in SAT scores. Out-of-sample forecasts for the post-COVID period (2020–2024) confirm that test-optional models relying only on HSGPA experience relatively little loss in predictive accuracy compared to models that include test scores. We conclude that HSGPA remains the most reliable signal of degree completion at broad-access public universities. |
| JEL: | J13 |
| Date: | 2026–03 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:34975 |
| By: | Cristina Gualdani; Elena Pastorino; Áureo de Paula; Sergio Salgado |
| Abstract: | We examine the empirical content of a large class of dynamic matching models of the labor market with ex-ante heterogeneous firms and workers, symmetric uncertainty and learning about workers’ productivity, and firms’ monopsony power. We allow workers’ human capital, acquired before and after entry into the labor market, to be general across firms to varying degrees. Such a framework nests and extends known models of worker turnover across firms, occupational choice, wage growth, wage differentials across occupations, firms, and industries, and wage dispersion across workers and over the life cycle. We establish intuitive conditions under which the model primitives are semiparametrically identified solely from data on workers’ wages and jobs, despite the dynamics of these models giving rise to complex patterns of selection based on endogenously time-varying observable and unobservable characteristics of workers and firms. By relying on this identification argument, we develop a constructive estimator of the model primitives, which builds on common methods for mixture and extremal quantile regression models and displays standard properties. Through the lens of this framework, we investigate how well typical empirical wage measures of matching assortativeness and firms’ wage-setting power detect the degrees of sorting and monopsony power in the labor market, respectively. We show that usual measures of sorting severely understate its importance because they ignore the option value of worker human capital and the information about worker productivity acquired through employment, in terms of higher future wages and improved future sorting, which is priced into current wages thus depressing them. We also demonstrate how the markdown of wages relative to output largely overstates firms’ labor market power by ignoring that this option value, which captures future returns from acquired human capital and information, generally lowers wages. We find evidence of both of these features in U.S. data by documenting a strong degree of labor market sorting once appropriately measured and, correspondingly, a lower degree of firm monopsony power than typically documented. |
| JEL: | E20 H0 J31 J42 |
| Date: | 2026–03 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:34973 |
| By: | Michael Graber; Morten Håvarstein; Magne Mogstad; Gaute Torsvik; Ola L. Vestad |
| Abstract: | The elasticity of taxable income (ETI) parameter is a key quantity in empirical analysis of tax policy and labor supply. We examine when a commonly applied class of ETI estimands can be used to learn about individuals’ ETI parameters and their (un)compensated elasticities of labor supply. We begin by providing necessary and sufficient conditions for these estimands to be given a causal interpretation as a positively weighted average of heterogeneous ETI parameters. We then apply these results to empirically analyze a reform of the Norwegian tax system that reduced the marginal tax rates on middle and high incomes. The estimated ETI parameters increase steadily with income, meaning high-income individuals are more responsive to tax changes than middle-income individuals. Next, we show how (un)compensated elasticities of labor supply can be bounded directly from the ETI estimands, or point identified by combining these estimands with estimates of earnings responses to lottery winnings. The results suggest an (un)compensated elasticity of 0.1 (0.0) for middle-income individuals. The (un)compensated elasticity estimates increase steadily with income to around 0.45 (0.3) for high-income individuals. These findings imply a substantial excess burden of taxation, and that reducing top-income tax rates would increase tax revenue. Our findings are also informative about how the intertemporal elasticity of substitution and the Frisch elasticity vary across the income distribution. |
| JEL: | C26 C36 H20 J22 |
| Date: | 2026–03 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:34987 |