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on Labour Economics |
| By: | Na'ama Shenhav; Danielle H. Sandler |
| Abstract: | We study the causal effect of women's education on their wages, non-wage job amenities, and spillovers to children. Using a regression discontinuity at the school entry birthdate cutoff, we find that women born just before the cutoff are more likely to complete some college, and experience multi-dimensional career gains that grow over the life cycle: greater employment and earnings, as well as more professional and higher-status jobs, more socially meaningful work, and better working conditions. Children’s early-life health and prenatal inputs improve in tandem with career improvements, consistent with professional advances spurring—not hindering—infant investments. Career gains are concentrated in jobs that require exactly some college, the same schooling margin shifted by the cutoff, which indicates that increased post-secondary education is the primary channel for these effects. Together, the results show that women's college attendance generates large career returns—from both wages and amenities—that strengthen over time and produce meaningful benefits for children. |
| JEL: | I12 I26 J13 J16 J32 |
| Date: | 2026–01 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:34767 |
| By: | Virginia Minni; Kieu-Trang Nguyen; Heather Sarsons; Carla Srebot |
| Abstract: | This paper studies how managers’ gender attitudes shape workplace culture and gender inequality. Using data from a multinational firm operating in over 100 countries, we leverage cross-country manager rotations to identify the effects of male managers' gender attitudes on gender pay gaps within a team. Managers from countries with one standard deviation more progressive gender attitudes reduce the pay gap by 5 percentage points (18%), largely through higher promotion rates for women. These effects persist after managers rotate out and are strongest in more conservative countries. Managers with progressive attitudes also influence the local office culture, as local managers who interact with but are not under the purview of the foreign manager begin to have smaller pay gaps in their teams. Our evidence points to individual managers as critical in shaping corporate culture. |
| JEL: | F23 J16 M14 |
| Date: | 2026–01 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:34782 |
| By: | Nicolás Irazoque Sillerico (IIE-FCE-UNLP) |
| Abstract: | This paper provides the first estimate of the impact of the Venezuelan exodus on Colombian students’ learning. To identify the impact, I use the reopening of the ColombianVenezuelan border in 2016 as a natural experiment and propose a differences-in-differences design. The results indicate that, on average, native high school students exposed to immigrants on the schools experience a decrease of 1.8% of a standard deviation in their academic performance and the effect is persistent for the first four years and tends to zero after that. A possible mechanism for this negative effect is that teachers allocate class time to assist lower-achieving Venezuelans. This effect becomes insignificant when the concentration of immigrants is higher. The negative effect is larger for women, for Colombians with high achievement, with highly educated mothers, and for natives who attend schools with high average scores and a high concentration of educated mothers. |
| JEL: | I21 J15 J24 |
| Date: | 2026–01 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:dls:wpaper:0364 |
| By: | Mats Ekman; Niklas Jakobsson; Andreas Kotsadam |
| Abstract: | We conduct a pre-registered randomized controlled trial to test for income targeting in labor supply decisions among sellers of a Swedish street paper. These workers face liquidity constraints, high income volatility, and discretion over hours. Treated individuals received a 25 percent bonus per copy sold for the duration of an issue, simulating an increase in earnings potential. Treated sellers sold more papers, worked longer hours, and took fewer days off. These findings contrast with studies on intertemporal labor supply that find small substitution effects. Notably, when we apply strategies similar to observational studies, we recover patterns consistent with income targeting. |
| Date: | 2026–02 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:arx:papers:2602.11992 |
| By: | Matias Ciaschi (CEDLAS-IIE-FCE-UNLP and CONICET); Mario Negre (The World Bank); Guido Neidhöfer (Türk-Alman Üniversitesi & ZEW Mannheim) |
| Abstract: | This paper presents comprehensive evidence on intergenerational mobility in Mozambique—the country with the lowest documented level of mobility worldwide—and investigates its relationship with child labor. Using survey data that includes a module on non co-resident adult children, we document a strong link between children’s educational attainment and parental education and household wealth. Interestingly, our findings suggest that child labor perpetuates intergenerational inequality, not merely as a response to income shocks, but mainly due to labor market structures—particularly the complementarity between parental and child labor and the substantial opportunity costs associated with schooling. These findings underscore the need for targeted policies that decouple children’s labor market prospects from those of their parents and enhance awareness of the long-term returns to education. |
| JEL: | D63 I24 J62 O15 |
| Date: | 2026–02 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:dls:wpaper:0365 |
| By: | James J. Feigenbaum; Yi-Ju Hung; Marco Tabellini; Monia Tomasella |
| Abstract: | We study the effects of immigration restrictions on the intergenerational mobility of US-born men in the United States. We link US-born sons observed in 1900, 1920, and 1940 full-count Censuses to their fathers, and construct a measure of county-level exposure to the 1920s immigration acts, which sharply curtailed immigration from Southern and Eastern Europe. Exploiting this policy-induced variation, we find that the quotas reduced intergenerational mobility among US-born white men, but had no adverse effect for Black men. Among whites, losses were smaller for sons of richer fathers, who were more likely to migrate away from highly exposed areas. Evidence from the 1940 Census indicates that exposed white men were less likely to be employed and earned lower wages in adulthood, consistent with both occupational downgrading and reduced productivity within occupations. We show that these effects operated through both reduced immigrant–native complementarities and incomplete substitution from unrestricted migration, while human capital investment can explain at most only a modest part of the total effect. |
| JEL: | J15 J62 K37 N32 |
| Date: | 2026–01 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:34775 |
| By: | Francis Dillon; Sari Pekkala Kerr; William R. Kerr; Andrew Wang |
| Abstract: | Immigrant students who attend U.S. colleges are disproportionately employed in either large firms—especially multinationals—or small firms and self-employment. Using linked Census and longitudinal employment data, we trace the jobs taken by college students in 2000 during the 2001-20 period and evaluate four mechanisms shaping sector and firm size placement: geographic clustering, degree specialization, firm capabilities/visas, and ethnic self-employment specialization. Degree fields predict large firm and MNE placement, while ethnic specialization explains small firm sorting. Immigrant students who remain in the U.S. earn more than their native peers, suggesting the segmentation reflects productive sorting rather than blocked opportunity. |
| Keywords: | Immigration, college, students, job placements, careers, multi-nationals, assimilation |
| JEL: | F22 F23 F66 I23 J61 L26 M13 M16 |
| Date: | 2026–01 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cen:wpaper:26-08 |
| By: | Alessandra Fogli; Veronica Guerrieri; Mark Ponder; Marta Prato |
| Abstract: | We study the macroeconomic effects of neighborhood-specific policies in a general equilibrium model of a city with endogenous residential sorting and educational investment. A key feature of the model is the presence of endogenous local spillovers that depend on the distribution of families across neighborhoods. We analyze three policies: a housing-voucher policy inspired by the MTO program, which enables poor families to relocate to low-poverty neighborhoods; a place-based transfer (PBT) policy that provides monetary transfers to families in poor neighborhoods; and a place-based investment (PBI) policy that invests resources in local institutions, such as public schools, to directly enhance local spillovers. We find that the MTO policy generates substantial income gains for children of recipient families, but scaling up the program dampens these gains and induces large welfare losses for non-recipients. By contrast, the PBT policy delivers larger average welfare gains but is less effective in reducing inequality and segregation. Finally, the PBI policy produces smaller short-run effects but, over time, resolves the trade-off by raising average welfare while simultaneously reducing inequality, lowering segregation, and improving intergenerational mobility. |
| JEL: | E24 I2 O15 R2 |
| Date: | 2026–01 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:34754 |
| By: | Raj Chetty; Rebecca Diamond; Thomas B. Foster; Lawrence F. Katz; Sonya Porter; Matthew Staiger; Laura Tach |
| Abstract: | We study whether low-economic-mobility neighborhoods can be transformed into high-mobility areas by analyzing the HOPE VI program, which invested $17 billion to revitalize 262 distressed public housing developments. We estimate the program’s impacts using a matched difference-in-differences design, comparing outcomes in revitalized developments to observably similar control developments using anonymized tax records. HOPE VI reduced neighborhood poverty rates by attracting higher-income families to revitalized neighborhoods, but had no causal impact on the earnings of adults living in public housing units. Children raised in revitalized public housing units earned more, were more likely to attend college, and were less likely to be incarcerated. Using a movers exposure design and sibling comparisons, we show that these improvements were driven by changes in neighborhoods’ causal effects on children’s outcomes. The improvements in neighborhood causal effects were driven in large part by changes in social interaction: HOPE VI increased interaction between public housing residents and peers in surrounding neighborhoods and increased earnings more for subgroups with higher-income peers. Many low-income families in the U.S. currently live in neighborhoods that are as socially isolated as the HOPE VI developments were prior to revitalization. We conclude that it is feasible to create high-opportunity neighborhoods and that connecting socially isolated areas to surrounding communities is a cost-effective approach to doing so. |
| JEL: | H0 J01 R0 |
| Date: | 2026–01 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:34720 |
| By: | Wilson King; Edward Miguel; Michael W. Walker |
| Abstract: | Taller people earn more, especially in low- and middle-income countries. We present among the first evidence of this phenomenon in Africa, using longitudinal microdata on a cohort of middle-aged Kenyan adults. We document a substantial height/earnings premium: controlling for gender, age, and other socio-demographics, monthly earnings increase by 1.07% per centimeter (or 2.72% per inch). Nearly half this effect can be explained by differences in cognition, measured from an unusually rich battery containing 27 modules. Additional shares of the premium can be attributed to measures of physical strength and non-cognitive ability. In contrast to prior work, we find little role for occupational sorting: conditional on cognitive and non-cognitive ability, taller people do not appear more likely to work in higher paid sectors. Leveraging repeated measures of height and an instrumental variables specification, we find suggestive evidence that measurement error may be attenuating the estimated relationship. |
| JEL: | I15 J1 O11 |
| Date: | 2026–01 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:34769 |
| By: | Sean Bassler; Kevin Rinz; David Wasser; Abigail Wozniak |
| Abstract: | Over the last decade, research on labor market adjustment following local demand shocks has expanded to explore a wide variety of measured shocks. However, the worker adjustments observed in response to these shocks are not always consistent across studies. We create a harmonized set of annual commuting-zone-level shocks following the major approaches in the literature to investigate these differences. As one might expect, shocks of different types exhibit different geographic and temporal patterns and are generally weakly correlated with each other. We find they also generate different employment and migration responses, with trade-related shocks showing little response on either margin, while more general Bartik-style shocks are associated with economically meaningful changes in both employment and migration. |
| Keywords: | labor demand shocks; employment; migration |
| JEL: | J23 R23 |
| Date: | 2026–02–05 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:fip:fedcwq:102404 |
| By: | Hertweck, Friederike; Maris, Robbie; Tonin, Mirco; Vlassopoulos, Michael |
| Abstract: | This paper examines university application patterns in the UK, focusing on the joint decision of selecting both an institution and a subject. Using administrative data from the Universities and Colleges Admissions Service (UCAS) covering almost all undergraduate applications between 2008 and 2021, we document three key facts: (i) students generally choose subject before university: they apply on average to around 1.6 subject areas across 4.6 institutions, and roughly half apply to a single field across multiple universities; (ii) there are significant gender gaps in application and offer rates that reflect field composition; (iii) high-socioeconomic status students submit more applications, apply less to local institutions, and obtain more offers, but these differences shrink sharply once we control for attainment and the selectivity of the programmes that students apply to. An expert survey suggests that several of these patterns run against conventional wisdom. |
| Abstract: | Die Studie untersucht Bewerbungsmuster an britischen Hochschulen, an welchen im Rahmen der Bewerbungen eine Entscheidung für eine Hochschule und einen Studiengang simultan getroffen werden muss. Anhand von Verwaltungsdaten des "Universities and Colleges Admissions Service (UCAS)", welche fast alle Bewerbungen für Bachelor-Studiengänge zwischen 2008 und 2021 abdecken, dokumentieren wir drei wichtige Fakten: Erstens wählen Studierende in der Regel zuerst das Studienfach und dann die Hochschule: Sie bewerben sich im Durchschnitt für etwa 1, 6 Fachbereiche an 4, 6 Hochschulen, und etwa die Hälfte bewirbt sich für ein einziges Fach an mehreren Hochschulen. Zweitens gibt es erhebliche geschlechtsspezifische Unterschiede bei den Bewerbungs- und Zulassungsquoten, die aber überwiegend die Zusammensetzung der Studienfächer widerspiegeln. Drittens reichen Studierende mit hohem sozioökonomischem Status mehr Bewerbungen ein, bewerben sich weniger bei Einrichtungen nahe ihrer Heimatregion und erhalten mehr Zulassungen, aber diese Unterschiede verringern sich stark, sobald wir die Leistungen und die Selektivität der Studiengänge, für die sich die Studierenden bewerben, berücksichtigen. Eine Befragung unter Expertinnen und Experten deutet darauf hin, dass einige dieser Muster den gängigen Einschätzungen zu Bewerbungsmustern widersprechen. |
| Keywords: | Higher Education, Application patterns, UCAS data, Gender, Socioeconomic Status |
| JEL: | I20 I23 M38 |
| Date: | 2025 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:zbw:rwirep:335899 |
| By: | Fedeli, Emanuele (University of Trento); Borgen, Solveig Topstad (University of Oslo); Triventi, Moris |
| Abstract: | A longstanding debate in research on peer effects concerns whether exposure to high-achieving classmates enhances or depresses students’ academic performance. While normative models emphasize positive spillovers, social comparison theories highlight negative contrast effects, and empirical evidence remains mixed. Moreover, it is unclear whether peer effects operate similarly across institutional contexts. This study addresses these issues through a comparative analysis of Italy and Norway, two educational systems that differ markedly in competitiveness, tracking, evaluation practices, and gender norms. Using harmonized, population-wide administrative register data, we follow three full student cohorts from Grade 5 to Grade 8. This longitudinal design allows us to control for prior achievement—an advantage unavailable in international assessments such as PISA, TIMSS, or PIRLS. We estimate value-added school fixed-effects models that exploit within-school, across-cohort variation in peer composition. Across both countries, higher average peer achievement is associated with lower individual performance, consistent with social comparison mechanisms. Exposure to top-performing peers has negative effects, while exposure to low-performing peers has positive effects. These patterns are similar across countries and do not vary systematically by gender, suggesting that peer comparison processes are remarkably stable across institutional contexts. |
| Date: | 2026–01–20 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:osf:socarx:sr8fn_v1 |
| By: | Filippo Da Re (University of Padova) |
| Abstract: | This paper examines how the parental occupations of grademates influence students’ choice to enrol in an academic high school track. Exploiting variation in the distribution of parental occupations across classes within Italian middle school cohorts, I find that a one standard deviation increase in the share of classmates with prestigious (humble) parental occupations raises (lowers) the likelihood of academic track enrolment by 2 percentage points. Instrumental variable estimates suggest this effect is not driven by individual or peer ability, indicating a direct influence of peer networks. The negative impact of peers from disadvantaged backgrounds is particularly pronounced for low-SES students and in provinces with low social mobility. The effect is concentrated in the most prestigious academic curricula, pointing to the role of social prestige and networks. Notably, immigrant students do not enrol in the academic track regardless of their peers. |
| Keywords: | High school track choice, peer effects, occupations. |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pad:wpaper:0320 |