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on Gender |
| By: | David Cuberes (Clark University); Jose V. Rodriguez Mora (University of Edinburgh); Ludo Visschers (The University of Edinburgh/Universidad); Marc Teignier (Universitat de Barcelona) |
| Abstract: | We present a model where labor supply decisions are made jointly by couples, and firms which respond to the joint nature of these decisions. In our model, parenthood requires a parent of choice to take some time out of the labor force, while a contracting friction implies that leaving the labor force imposes a cost on firms that hired them. An efficiency wages mechanism arises when there is assortative mating in the productivity level of family members, as firms know that increasing the wage of their employees makes them less likely to leave the labor force. As a consequence, no equilibrium in pure strategies without discrimination is possible. If firms can condition wages on gender there exists an equilibrium where women are paid less than men at all productivity levels, while productive women always employed but paid less than men (glass ceiling) and less productive women are not employed. If firms can not condition on wages on gender but can do so on a characteristic (even if irrelevant for productivity) another equilibrium (akin to mixed strategies) arises. In it at each productivity level workers of both genders have heterogeneous wages with identical distribution. The efficiency effects of these equilibrium are complex as it worsens allocation within families, as it adds noise inducing in occasion the most productive member to leave the market. We extent the model allowing for differences in home and market productivity of genders and show that in the gender discrimination equilibrium a decrease in the gap of productivity induces female participation increases at low productivity levels while top female wages rise. Furthermore, increases in female participation increase male wage inequality. In a dynamic version of the model we hypothesize that if in the past, productivity differences made discriminatory equilibrium unique, then as productivities converge the discriminatory equilibrium remain unique. Instead of multiple equilibrium we may observe multiple steady states that make gender differences stable in the absence of policy changes. |
| Date: | 2018 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:red:sed018:1138&r=gen |
| By: | Todd R. Stinebrickner; Ralph Stinebrickner; Paul J. Sullivan |
| Abstract: | Gender differences in current and past job tasks may be crucial for understanding the gender wage gap. We use novel task data to address well-known measurement concerns, including that standard task measures assume away within-occupation gender differences in tasks. We find that unique measures of task-specific experience, in particular high-skilled information experience, are of particular importance for understanding the substantial widening of the wage gap early in the career. Highlighting the importance of these measures, traditional work-related proxies for gender differences in human capital accumulation are not informative because general work experience is similar by gender for our recent graduates. |
| JEL: | J01 J16 |
| Date: | 2018–07 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:24790&r=gen |
| By: | Ilyana Kuziemko; Jessica Pan; Jenny Shen; Ebonya Washington |
| Abstract: | After decades of convergence, the gender gap in employment outcomes has recently plateaued in many rich countries, despite the fact that women have increased their investment in human capital over this period. We propose a hypothesis to reconcile these two trends: that when they are making key human capital decisions, women in modern cohorts underestimate the impact of motherhood on their future labor supply. Using an event-study framework, we show substantial and persistent employment effects of motherhood in U.K. and U.S. data. We then provide evidence that women do not anticipate these effects. Upon becoming parents, women (and especially more educated women) adopt more negative views toward female employment (e.g., they are more likely to say that women working hurts family life), suggesting that motherhood serves as an information shock to their beliefs. Women on average (and, again, more educated women in particular) report that parenthood is harder than they expected. We then look at longer horizons—are young women's expectations about future labor supply correct when they make their key educational decisions? In fact, female high school seniors are increasingly and substantially overestimating the likelihood they will be in the labor market in their thirties, a sharp reversal from previous cohorts who substantially underestimated their future labor supply. Finally, we specify a model of women's choice of educational investment in the face of uncertain employment costs of motherhood, which demonstrates that our results can be reconciled only if these costs increased unexpectedly across generations. We end by documenting a collage of empirical evidence consistent with such a trend. |
| JEL: | J13 J16 J22 |
| Date: | 2018–06 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:24740&r=gen |
| By: | Laurent Gobillon (PJSE - Paris Jourdan Sciences Economiques - UP1 - Université Panthéon-Sorbonne - ENS Paris - École normale supérieure - Paris - INRA - Institut National de la Recherche Agronomique - EHESS - École des hautes études en sciences sociales - ENPC - École des Ponts ParisTech - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, INED - Institut national d'études démographiques, PSE - Paris School of Economics, CEPR - Center for Economic Policy Research - CEPR); Dominique Meurs (INED - Institut national d'études démographiques, EconomiX - UPN - Université Paris Nanterre - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique); Sébastien Roux (INED - Institut national d'études démographiques) |
| Abstract: | We propose an assignment model in which positions along a hierarchy are attributed to individuals depending on their characteristics. Our theoretical framework can be used to study differences in assignment and outcomes across groups and we show how it can motivate decomposition and counterfactual exercises. It constitutes an alternative to more descriptive methods such as Oaxaca decompositions and quantile counterfactual approaches. In an application, we study gender disparities in the public and private sectors with a French exhaustive administrative dataset. Whereas females are believed to be treated more fairly in the public sector, we find that the gender gap in propensity to get job positions along the wage distribution is rather similar in the two sectors. The gender wage gap in the public sector is 13:3 points and it increases by only 0:7 percentage points when workers are assigned to job positions according to the rules of the private sector. Nevertheless, the gender gap at the last decile in the public sector increases by as much as 3:6 percentage points when using the assignment rules of the private sector. |
| Keywords: | assignment,distributions,counterfactuals,wages,gender,public sector |
| Date: | 2017–04 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hal:wpaper:halshs-01513012&r=gen |
| By: | Deepak Saraswat (University of Connecticut) |
| Abstract: | Open Defecation has been linked to various public health issues and has gained significant policy attention. Investing in adoption of better sanitation has also been advocated on the grounds of providing women with privacy and protection from po-tential harassment. Nonetheless, previous research has shown that due to son-biased preferences, households in India under-invest in outcomes for their female children. I use the gender of the first-born child as an indicator of the presence of adult female children in households and find that, in certain cases, households reduce open defeca-tion if the first-born child is a girl. The findings in this paper provide a new first stage association between gender composition of children and sanitation behavior and also contribute to the economic literature on decision making in households belonging to developing countries. |
| Keywords: | Sanitation, Open Defecation, Gender Composition of Children, India |
| JEL: | O10 O18 J18 |
| Date: | 2018–07 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:uct:uconnp:2018-12&r=gen |
| By: | Zheng, Yan; Vukina, Tomislav; Zheng, Xiaoyong |
| Abstract: | This paper uses truncated count model with endogeneity and simulated maximum likelihood estimation technique to estimate gender differences in moral hazard in health care insurance. We use the dataset which consists of invoices for all outpatient services from a regional hospital in Croatia. Our theoretical model predicts that higher risk aversion is associated with smaller moral hazard effect. If women are more risk-averse than men, then the moral hazard effect due to health insurance should be lower in women than in men. Whereas the overall results show a statistically significant evidence of moral hazard for the general population, we found economically small but statistically significant larger moral hazard in women than in men. |
| Keywords: | Risk and Uncertainty |
| Date: | 2017–07–03 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ags:ncarwp:262936&r=gen |