Labour Economics http://lists.repec.org/mailman/listinfo/nep-lab Labour Economics 2026-08-17 Motivating Job Seekers: A Field Experiment https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp18812&r=&r=lab Reduced motivation over the unemployment spell may contribute to declining job-finding rates. We report findings from a low-cost digital intervention that uses motivational emails to enhance job seekers' search effort. Using a randomized controlled trial that included 200, 720 newly unemployed job seekers in Sweden, we evaluate both supportive messages aimed at encouraging inner motivation, and controlling messages focused on internal and external pressure. The messages increased compliance with mandatory activity reporting, indicating a clear first-stage behavioral response. However, this behavioral change did not translate in more effective job search as both types of emails caused a moderate but significant reduction in search effort and job finding. The supportive messages reduced the number of job applications and showed weakly negative job-finding effects, particularly among men. The controlling messages slightly backfired for job seekers who report strong autonomous motivation at the onset of unemployment. These findings underscore the challenges of motivating job seekers to actively search for jobs and suggest that low-cost digital interventions, in isolation, are inadequate and may even be counterproductive. Cockx, Bart Egebark, Johan Van Hoye, Greet Videnord, Emilie Vikström, Johan autonomous and controlled motivation, job search, supportive and controlling, large-scale RCT, low-cost intervention, field experiment, backfiring, self-determination theory 2026-07 Can a Digital Job Search Coach Reduce Unemployment ? Experimental Evidence from France https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:wbk:wbrwps:11376&r=&r=lab This paper evaluates the impact of Bob Emploi, a digital platform designed to provide personalized job search advice and coaching to the unemployed. The platform, developed by a nonprofit organization with access to France’s public employment agency data, aims to replicate traditional counseling services through automated tools. The experiment included 212, 277 individuals, with 56.3 percent randomly assigned to receive encouragement to use the platform. Although our intervention increased Bob Emploi’s usage by 27 percentage points, the effects of the platform remained limited. Users made modest changes to their search methods, showed slightly higher engagement with standard employment services, and felt more supported in their search. However, the evaluation finds no impact on time spent searching, occupational scope, or job seeker well-being. Most importantly, the platform did not improve any employment outcomes over an 18-month follow-up period, with precise null effects across all subgroups. These results suggest that digital job search assistance platforms may need to combine coaching with specific job recommendations to effectively improve job seekers’ labor market outcomes. Ben Dhia, Aïcha Crépon, Bruno Mbih, Esther Paul-Delvaux, Louise Rita Picard, Bertille Pons, Vincent 2026-05-11 Informing the Job Search: A Field Experiment in an Urban Labor Market https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp18821&r=&r=lab We examine the impact of labor market information on beliefs, job search and employment outcomes of job seekers in urban India. Through a cluster-randomized intervention in Delhi, over 3000 men and women are randomized into a treatment group in which they are informed and assisted in accessing a job matching platform, supplemented by phone messages that deliver either non-personalized or personalized labor market information; or a control group in which neither assistance with the matching platform nor any phone messages is given. A year after intervention, men reduce overall job search while women's search shifts to online modes in both treatment groups. Although there is no impact on overall employment, we find evidence of a marginal shift in occupational structure -- away from casual jobs towards salaried work -- along with higher earnings, for women in later months. These employment impacts are relatively stronger in the personalized messaging group. We highlight the role of (mis-)beliefs about the labor market and gendered information frictions in explaining our findings. Afridi, Farzana Sahoo, Soubhagya Sangwan, Nikita job search, digital platforms, employment, expectations, gender, youth 2026-07 Childhood Exposure to Joint Custody Reforms and Adult Family Formation https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp18831&r=&r=lab Joint custody reforms are among the most consequential family-law changes for children, yet little is known about their long-term effects. Exploiting staggered adoption across US states and 13 million ACS observations, we show that childhood exposure reduces adult fertility by 7 percent, symmetrically for women and men and operates primarily through lower parenthood and couple formation. Effects are sub-additive within couples, while exposed individuals assortatively match. Our findings point to the formation of family preferences during childhood and align with a US fertility decline increasingly driven by rising childlessness and declining couple formation rather than smaller families among parents. Fernández-Kranz, Daniel Fontenay, Sébastien fertility, joint custody, family law, household behavior, intergenerational transmission 2026-07 Labor Market Tightness and Hiring Outcomes: Evidence from Job Application Data https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp18778&r=&r=lab This study examines how the supply of job applicants shapes hiring outcomes of firms. Using Austrian matched vacancy-worker data, my analysis exploits variation in the number of job applications, inferred from referrals made by the public employment service. To address endogeneity concerns, I instrument the number of applications with the inflow of jobseekers from mass layoffs. A larger supply of applicants shortens vacancy filling duration and raises the job tenure of hires, consistent with improved worker-firm match quality. At the same time, more applications lower starting wages, which indicates that the employer-bargaining channel dominates the match-quality channel. A larger applicant pool also reinforces worker segregation: firms with high shares of male (native) workers hire even fewer female (foreign) workers when applications are abundant. This reflects employer selection rather than a shift in the composition of the applicant pool, which responds little to the supply shock. Ziegler, Lennart labor market tightness, vacancies, recruitment, worker-firm match quality, wage setting, worker segregation 2026-07 Gender Differences in Self-Promotion and Career Advice https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp18777&r=&r=lab We study the role of self-promotion and career advice in sustaining gender differences in labor market outcomes. We conduct a pre-registered experiment in which “advisers†advise “workers†to attempt either a more or a less ambitious task. We find that women promote themselves less than men and, as a result, are 12 percentage points less likely to be advised to choose the more ambitious task. This gender gap in advice persists across both quantitative and qualitative self-assessments and is robust to variation in advisers' information sets — including when advisers observe workers' actual performance — but is eliminated and even reversed when advisers are informed of the gender gap in self-promotion. Megalokonomou, Rigissa Silva Goncalves, Juliana van Veldhuizen, Roel advice, gender, self-promotion, randomized experiment 2026-07 Changing Gender Norms Across Generations: Evidence from a Paternity Leave Reform https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ces:ceswps:_12863&r=&r=lab Social norms are an important barrier to gender convergence in economic outcomes. We study whether a public policy designed to promote gender equality at home can pave the way towards gender convergence by shaping gender norms in the next generation. We exploit the introduction of paid paternity leave in Spain in 2007, which granted fathers 13 days of non-transferable paid leave after childbirth. Eligibility depended sharply on the child’s date of birth. We combine this policy variation with original survey data collected from adolescents and implement a within-school difference-in-differences design comparing children born just before and after the reform cutoff within the same school cohort, using adjacent cohorts as controls. Children exposed to paternity leave eligibility display more egalitarian gender attitudes and beliefs in early adolescence. They are also more likely to engage in counter-stereotypical household chores, and hold less gender-stereotypical expectations regarding future work and family roles. The effects largely disappear in late adolescence. Lídia Farré Christina Felfe Libertad González Patrick Schneider gender equality, gender norms, paternity leave permits 2026 The Cost of Job Loss for Coal Miners in Turkey https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp18813&r=&r=lab This paper estimates the labor-market costs of job displacement among coal miners in Turkey, a middle-income country where coal phase-out has not yet begun but may become increasingly relevant under decarbonization pressures. Using linked employer–employee administrative data, we identify displaced workers through mass layoffs and estimate event-study models with propensity score matching. We document large and persistent earnings losses. Among workers returning to registered employment, real monthly earnings fall by about 25 percent immediately after displacement and daily wages decline by 11–14 percent. Workers returning to coal experience virtually no persistent wage penalty, whereas those switching to non-coal sectors face lasting daily-wage losses of about 18 percent. Losses are largest for core underground miners, longer-tenured workers, and workers with longer non-employment spells. Over five years, the present discounted value of earnings losses equals roughly one year of pre-displacement earnings. Although the aggregate burden appears manageable at the national level, it is highly concentrated in coal-dependent regions, underscoring the importance of place-based just-transition policies. Ayhan, Sinem Lehmann, Hartmut coal phase-out, job displacement, just transition, wage losses, employment 2026-07 What Do Others Think? Norm Beliefs And Women's Work In Pakistan https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:zbw:glodps:1786&r=&r=lab Female labor force participation in LMICs remains persistently low, despite improvements in women's education, fertility, and income that would normally predict higher participation. We argue that this pattern can reflect a coordination failure sustained by miscalibrated second-order beliefs about community approval of women working outside the home. In many households, a woman's employment is determined by more than one decision-maker, and each may care about the perceived approval of both men and women in the community. Therefore, the binding misperception can lie in any of four belief cells: men's beliefs about men, men's beliefs about women, women's beliefs about men, or women's beliefs about women. We study these possibilities using novel primary survey data from more than 4, 000 low-income Pakistani households. Within households, we elicit each respondent's own support for women's work, second-order beliefs about community support, and the target woman's labor-market behavior, comparing households within the same census block. We find that support for women's work is widely underestimated, especially support among women, so communities are substantially more accepting than their members believe. The belief most strongly associated with a woman's search and work history is her own perception of other women's approval. Male household members' beliefs matter mainly for women's current employment status, consistent with their role in granting permission. The belief that appears most important is also correlated across generations along gender lines: mothers' beliefs about women predict daughters' beliefs about women. Evidence on mechanisms points most strongly to social learning about respectability rather than the anticipation of social sanctions from other women. Kaleem, Hira Sakakibara, Anri Wadho, Waqar Siddique, Abu Women working outside the home, social norms, misperceptions, second-order beliefs, pluralistic ignorance, peer effects, Pakistan 2026 Inequality of Opportunity in Times of Rising Global Inequality: USA vs. Switzerland https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp18764&r=&r=lab We provide a comparative analysis of inequality of opportunity for children’s future success in Switzerland and the United States during an era of rising global inequality. Leveraging Swiss administrative earnings data and U.S. survey data, we estimate sibling correlations for cohorts entering the labor market in the early 1970s and early 1980s in the two countries. We find a sharp rise in sibling correlations and income inequality in the United States during the 1980s similar to Davis & Mazumder (2026) who study intergenerational income mobility. However, we find that both inequality and inequality of opportunity in Switzerland remained remarkably stable. Sibling correlations in long-run income consistently hovered below 15% across both cohorts in Switzerland, whereas in the United States they nearly doubled, from 15.4% to 30.6%. These findings thus position Switzerland as a salient counterfactual to the U.S. case. Bühler, Jonas Davis, Jonathan Häner-Müller, Melanie Mazumder, Bhashkar Schaltegger, Christoph inequality of opportunity, income inequality, social mobility, time trends, sibling correlation 2026-06 Compulsory Education, Life Trajectories, and Intergenerational Mobility: Evidence from Mexico's 1993 Schooling Reform https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp18864&r=&r=lab Mexico's 1993 reform extended compulsory schooling from six to nine years, creating a birth-cohort discontinuity in educational exposure. Using a regression discontinuity and instrumental variable design in the 2020 Mexican Census, this paper traces the reform's effects from educational attainment through fertility, child mortality, employment, and migration, into the schooling of the next generation. The reform raised attainment across all groups, but its effects were concentrated among Indigenous communities and rural populations, where baseline attainment was lowest: Indigenous literacy rose by 4.5 percentage points and lower-secondary completion by 3.8, from baselines of 78 and 29 per cent. These gains translated into lower fertility, reduced child mortality, higher employment, and a reallocation of workers out of low-productivity agriculture into higher-productivity sectors. Linking parents to children through census household identifiers, an additional year of parental schooling raised children's secondary enrolment by 3 to 4 percentage points and upper-secondary enrolment by 5 to 8. A single compulsory schooling reform thus generated a sustained, multi-domain shift in life trajectories extending across generations. de la Fuente Stevens, Diego compulsory schooling, education reform, intergenerational mobility, fertility, labour markets outcomes, migration 2026-08 Foreign-Native Wage Differentials and the Role of Visa Regime in Japan: Evidence from the Linked Employer-Employee Data, 2020-2023 https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp18762&r=&r=lab Using newly available linked employer-employee data, we investigate foreign-native wage differentials in Japan. Our contribution is twofold: first, we benchmark Japan against Western countries by following Hermansen et al. (2025)’s method; second, we exploit Japan’s tightly structured visa regime to analyze how immigration policy shapes the economic integration of foreign workers. We find that the raw foreign-native wage gap of 28% shrinks to 16% after controlling for employee attributes, and disappears entirely when accounting for workplace characteristics. Compared to the West, across-firm sorting and within-firm task segregation-rather than occupational segregation-plays a greater role in Japan. Moreover, while patterns of wage convergence vary starkly by visa category, foreign wage disadvantage becomes negligible in all visa categories once all factors are controlled. Our results reveal highly segmented labor market in Japan where employee and workplace attributes differ sharply not only between native and foreign workers, but also among foreign workers across visa categories. We argue that Japan’s demand-driven visa regime facilitates near complete wage convergence albeit at the cost of substantial labor market segmentation. Hashimoto, Yuki Kambayashi, Ryo Manjome, Masao Moriguchi, Chiaki Nakagawa, Mariko Saeki, Yasutaka wage inequality, immigration policy, economic integration 2026-06 Immigrants' Regularization and Native Workers' Response https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cii:cepidt:2026-09&r=&r=lab Using employer-employee Italian data over the period 1998-2018 we analyze the impact of the largest regularization of undocumented immigrant workers in Italy on wage, employment and mobility outcomes of natives. Our empirical strategy takes advantage of the 2002 Bossi-Fini law that unexpectedly regularized 634, 000 undocumented non-EU immigrants, with variation across firms and provinces that was not correlated with previous economic performance. We find that the policy had a small effect on the average wage of native workers and positive effects on their employment at the local labor market level. Additionally, native co-workers in firms more affected by the policy were more likely to change employers in the post-policy period. Such higher mobility resulted in a heterogeneous wage effect across switchers: workers that managed to transition towards better firms experienced wage gains in the medium- and long-run, while other workers experienced wage losses. This implied an increase in wage dispersion for natives and some losers among Italian workers. Gianluca Orefice Giovanni Peri Gianluca Santoni Workers;Firms;Immigrant Regularization;Local Labor Market 2026-07 Do State-Funded Pre-K Programs Improve Long-Run Outcomes? https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp18790&r=&r=lab We study the long-term effects of access to state-funded early childhood education on educational attainment and labor market outcomes. To do so, we exploit quasi-random variation across districts and cohorts generated by the phased rollout of Texas's large-scale public Pre-K program. Using restricted-access administrative data, we find that access to state-funded Pre-K substantially increases enrollment, particularly in districts without alternative preschool options. Additional results show that in districts that provide Pre-K simultaneously for three- and four-year-olds, access to Pre-K increases earnings at age 27 and high-school graduation by about 4 percent, with no effect on college enrollment. In contrast, access to Pre-K has no effects on labor market and educational outcomes in districts that primarily serve four-year-olds only. We provide suggestive evidence that the effectiveness of state-funded Pre-K depends on program funding rather than access alone. Mikdash, Maya Zhong, Jiee state-funded prekindergarten, early childhood education, human capital, educational attainment, labor market outcomes 2026-07 The Anatomy of Polarization: Evidence from Worker Flows https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp18826&r=&r=lab Using a French administrative panel following workers over 1984-2021, we quantify how worker flows account for employment polarization. We trace job-to-job flows across manual, routine, and abstract occupations, and flows between employment and non-employment. Polarization emerges after 1994 mostly through a shift in the latter: a collapse in entry into routine jobs, concentrated in routine-cognitive occupations. Job-to-job upgrading from routine to abstract remains large and stable, with non-college workers accounting for 76% of net flows. Manual employment grows mainly by absorbing entrants. Polarization reflects sorting at entry and re-entry rather than incumbent displacement, motivating life-cycle models incorporating both margins. Cerina, Fabio Dienesch, Elisa Monge-Naranjo, Alex Moro, Alessio labor market polarization, worker flows, occupational mobility, routine-biased technological change, longitudinal data 2026-07 Choosing When to Work: The Productivity Effects of Flexible Scheduling https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:uwa:wpaper:26-06&r=&r=lab Do flexible working hours benefit or hurt productivity? To answer this question, we conducted an experiment on a major online freelance platform. We began with three data entry job postings that were identical except for the level of flexibility in work hours. For each job, we invited a randomly selected group of freelancers to apply, and we hired all freelancers who accepted the job offer. Next, among the freelancers hired for jobs with no or limited flexibility, a randomly chosen subset was later granted full flexibility. We find that, compared to freelancers hired for the flexible job, those who had no flexibility in choosing work hours produced 25% fewer correct entries. Around 40% of this effect is explained by selection - more productive workers are more likely to choose flexible jobs. The remaining 60% is a direct effect of reduced flexibility in choosing work hour Rakesh Banerjee Tushar Bharati Adnan Fakir Yiwei Qian work-hours flexibility, online freelancing jobs 2026 Dynastic Capital and the Inheritance of Social Advantage https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp18862&r=&r=lab We use Norwegian register data to examine how social capital is transmitted across generations. We construct a measure of families' social position based on six dimensions: elite education, elite occupation, executive status, corporate elite, elite positions in top firms, and elite tract. Social capital is highly persistent across generations and strongly predicts children’s income and access to elite positions, even conditional on parental income, wealth, education, and ability. Horse-race regressions suggest that social capital is a distinct dimension of advantage that is as important as parental income and cognitive ability in shaping children's outcomes. The influence of social capital grows over the life cycle, and reaching the top of the income distribution requires both high inherited income and social capital. Accounting for social capital also alters conventional estimates of income-based mobility, indicating that part of what is typically attributed to inherited income reflects the transmission of social position. Quasi-experimental evidence from adoptions and parental lottery prizes suggests that these patterns reflect environmental transmission rather than genetic inheritance or direct financial resources. Lovenheim, Michael van Egeraat, Eppie Willén, Alexander social capital, intergenerational mobility, inequality, elite positions 2026-08 Life After Divorce: Effects Of Joint Custody On Parents And Children https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cwl:cwldpp:2543&r=&r=lab Divorce reshapes family life, yet little is known about one of its most consequential features: the allocation of child custody. We study the impact of joint versus sole custody on both parents and children using rich administrative data from Sweden linked to over 25 years of newly-collected court custody rulings. To address selection concerns, we exploit random assignment of custody disputes to judges who differ sharply in their propensity to grant joint custody. For fathers, joint custody substantially raises earnings and improves mental health, consistent with sustained paternal involvement enhancing labor market attachment and psychological well-being. In contrast, there are no measurable labor market or mental health effects for mothers. Turning to children, joint custody increases standardized test scores and school quality without affecting mental health outcomes. Joint custody increases fathersÕ chances of remarriage, keeps separated parents in closer geographic proximity, and has no effect on intimate partner violence allegations against either partner. These findings inform longstanding debates over the role of child custody in shaping post-divorce family life. Stella Canessa Gordon B. Dahl Anna Hasselqvist Costas Meghir Susan Niknami MŒrten Palme Helmut Rainer Olof Rosenqvist Pengpeng Xiao 2026-07-09 Clause and Effect: Theory and Field Experimental Evidence on Noncompete Clauses https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp18820&r=&r=lab We study worker noncompete clauses in a large field experiment with two finance firms. Across ~14, 000 job offers to freelance recruiters on short-term contracts, we randomize wages and the presence, salience, and duration of noncompetes (all contracts also included a nondisclosure agreement). Removing a noncompete increases mobility between competing employers by 36--52% and raises workers' total earnings from the two firms by 12--17%. We find no evidence---rejecting even small effects---that removing noncompetes generates secret leakage. We also find no evidence that workers choose noncompete jobs for higher pay. Many workers appear unaware of noncompetes before firms' post-employment communication. The results align with a model of inattention and uncertainty about enforcement. Cowgill, Bo Freiberg, Brandon Starr, Evan noncompete clauses, earnings, knowledge diffusion, mobility, contracting, inattention, enforcement risk 2026-07 Does tightening the duration of temporary contracts cost jobs? Evidence from Germany https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:zbw:zewdip:341996&r=&r=lab Many countries limit how long a worker may be kept on a temporary contract, yet little is known about how firms and workers respond when this maximum duration is tightened. Does a shorter cap simply displace temporary jobs, or does it push firms towards permanent hiring? I provide causal evidence on this duration margin using a 2001 German reform that restricted temporary contracts longer than two years in previously exempt small firms. Using difference-in-differences combined with propensity-score matching, I find that new jobs became around five percentage points more likely to start with a permanent contract, that contract durations bunched at the cap, and that overall employment was not adversely affected. Once the first capped contracts matured, turnover of short-tenure workers rose by a third to a half, but conversions to permanent contracts dominated this churn margin, and post-reform labour-market entrants saw higher early-career earnings and job stability. The findings speak directly to the current debate over lengthening such caps, including Germany's plan to double its own from two to four years. Brüll, Eduard Temporary Employment, Employment Protection, Labour Market Segmentation, Germany 2026 Who Hires Whom? Entrepreneurial Backgrounds and Labor Market Opportunities https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cen:wpaper:26-45&r=&r=lab What are the implications of unequal access to entrepreneurial careers for labor markets? Using data from the U.S. Census and LinkedIn profiles, we document that entrepreneurs are significantly more likely to hire workers from similar social backgrounds (gender, race, age, education, etc.). These effects are quantitatively large across several demographic dimensions. For example, female employee share at female-founded startups is 36.4pp higher after controlling for industry-by-metro area-by-cohort fixed effects, with corresponding estimates of 51.2pp for Blacks, 37.3pp for Hispanics, and 11.3pp for non-college individuals. Large effects are present in high-growth startups, across industries and occupations, and remain stable across new firm cohorts. In addition, we find that these differences persist out to at least 20 years. We use wage data and an AKM research design to untangle whether the relative differences are driven by labor demand or labor supply effects. We find that demand drives the differences: group-specific wage decompositions show that new firms pay higher relative wages to individuals from similar backgrounds to the entrepreneur. Using these estimates, we calibrate a model of entrepreneurship with heterogeneous ability and production functions, and assess the impacts on relative wage from reducing access barriers to entrepreneurship. Josh Feng Xavier Jaravel entrepreneurship, hiring, labor market, production functions 2026-07 Unpacking Treatment Effect Heterogeneity in a Large-Scale Dropout-Prevention Experiment https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp18840&r=&r=lab Timely high school completion is a critical step in successful transitions to post-secondary schooling and the labor market. This randomized controlled trial, deployed in two urban, disadvantaged school districts, tests the effectiveness of a mature and comprehensive student-support program on an unusually large scale (n=2, 528). While overall effects on graduation rates are small and statistically insignificant, exploratory analyses reveal notable variation by site and over time, mirroring heterogeneity in treatment timing and program implementation. These findings highlight the challenges of scaling interventions and raise concerns about generalizing results from small-scale, single-site evaluations. Dee, Thomas Gibbs, Chloe Margolit-Chan, Rebecca Morrell, Lillian Sullivan, James graduation, dropout 2026-08 The Labor Market Effects of Expanding Overtime Coverage https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ces:ceswps:_12904&r=&r=lab This paper examines the labor market effects of overtime coverage in the United States, where salaried workers are covered for overtime if their base pay falls below a legislated salary threshold. Using an event-study design with administrative payroll data and state-level threshold changes from 2014-2021, I find evidence against conventional models of overtime. Contrary to the historical intent of policymakers, firms do not increase employment by substituting more workers for fewer hours. However, contrary to compensating differential models, firms also do not offset the costs of overtime by lowering workers' base pays. Instead, employers raised salaries above the threshold to keep workers exempt from overtime, indicating that monitoring and adjusting workers' hours is costly for firms. Taken together, these results suggest that expanding overtime coverage increases workers' earnings without negatively impacting employment. Simon Quach overtime, Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA), salary threshold 2026 Estimating the Returns to Occupational Licensing: Evidence from Regression Discontinuities at the Bar Exam https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp18816&r=&r=lab We estimate the earnings returns to occupational licensing by exploiting regression discontinuities at the Italian bar exam. Law graduates who became lawyers after barely passing the exam earned 20, 000 euros (50%) more per year than they would have in alternative occupations. This premium is not driven by monopoly rents from entry barriers. Instead, it reflects a compensating differential for the greater earnings risk inherent in the legal profession relative to the outside options available to law graduates. Bamieh, Omar Cintolesi, Andrea Pagliero, Mario labor market regulation, occupational licensing, field of study, lawyers 2026-07