This paper obtains comparable estimates of the effect of unemployment insurance (UI) benefits on labor supply throughout the unemployment spell and over the business cycle using a regression kink design and 20 years of administrative data from California. For a given unemployment duration, the behavioral effect of UI benefit levels on labor supply does not vary with the business cycle from 2002 to 2019. However, due to increased coverage from extensions in benefit durations, the duration elasticity of UI benefits rises during recessions. The behavioral effect during the start of the COVID-19 pandemic is substantially lower at all unemployment durations.

We investigate the impact of recent gentrification shocks on minority neighborhoods in the 50 largest US labor markets. We show that household moves from a given neighborhood are concentrated to few destinations with similar minority shares and strong network ties, but those neighborhoods are farther away from downtown. Gentrification affects Black neighborhoods by raising house prices, reducing the proportion of Black households, and increasing the share of movers going to neighborhoods with network ties. However, gentrification has negligible effects on Hispanic neighborhoods. Overall labor market area segregation decreases after a gentrification shock because highly Black neighborhoods become less segregated.

This paper quantifies the causal negative impact of age on women’s marriage market appeal using an experiment where real online daters rate hypothetical profiles with randomly assigned ages. Truthfulness is incentivized through the experiment’s compensation: participants receive professional dating advice customized according to their ratings. The experiment shows that for every year a woman ages, she must earn $7, 000 more annually to remain equally attractive to potential partners. This preference appears driven by women’s asymmetric fertility decline with age, as it is present only for men without children and who have accurate knowledge of the age-fertility trade-off.

I investigate the link between access to the contraceptive pill, mental health, education, and labor market outcomes. Liberalizing education and labor market effects of access to the pill via its fertility control function are well established. More recently, however, a medical literature suggests a link between hormonal contraception and depression. Exploiting variation in access to the pill, I document substantial mental health effects of the pill. These mental health effects are driven by individuals with a genetic predisposition for depression who then do not experience the positive effects on education and labor market outcomes.

We study the extent to which employer heterogeneity affects gender gaps in earnings across the distribution, over time, and over the life cycle, accounting for cohort effects. Using a linked employer-employee dataset for Italy, we show that the gender gap in firm pay premia explains 34% of the mean gender pay gap, mainly due to between-firm components. Within-firm differences are more important at the top of the distribution and have become more relevant over time. Gender differences in mobility toward firms with higher pay premia and within-firm gender inequality partly explain the gender gap in firm pay premia.

Previous articleNext article No AccessOccupation Growth, Skill Prices, and Wage InequalityMichael J. Böhm, Hans-Martin von Gaudecker, and Felix SchranMichael J. Böhm Search for more articles by this author , Hans-Martin von Gaudecker Search for more articles by this author , and Felix Schran Search for more articles by this author PDFPDF PLUS Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail SectionsMoreDetailsFiguresReferencesCited by Journal of Labor Economics Just Accepted Published for the Society of Labor Economists, Economics Research Center/ NORC Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1086/722084 Views: 123Total views on this site Citations: 2Citations are reported from Crossref HistoryAccepted July 27, 2022 PDF download Crossref reports the following articles citing this article:Eduard Storm On the measurement of tasks: does expert data get it right?, Journal for Labour Market Research 57, no.11 (Feb 2023).https://doi.org/10.1186/s12651-023-00332-zMichael J Böhm, Daniel Metzger, Per Strömberg “Since You’re So Rich, You Must Be Really Smart”: Talent, Rent Sharing, and the Finance Wage Premium, The Review of Economic Studies 67 (Dec 2022).https://doi.org/10.1093/restud/rdac079

We study the impact of financial incentives on higher education decisions and the choice of major. We rely on a reform whereby Israeli kibbutzim shifted from their traditional policy of equal sharing to productivity-based wages. We use for identification the staggered implementation of this reform in different kibbutzim. In this setting of very low initial returns to education, we find that the dramatic increase in the rate of return and its sharp variation across fields of study led to a large increase in the probability of receiving a Bachelor degree, especially in STEM fields of study that are expected to yield higher financial returns. For men this increase was largely in computer science and engineering, and for women in biology, chemistry and computer science. Our findings suggest that investment in higher education and the choice of major are responsive to increases in the return to education for both men and women. Institutional subscribers to the NBER working paper series, and residents of developing countries may download this paper without additional charge at www.nber.org.

Wachsende Lohnungleichheit geht mit Veranderungen der Allokation von Arbeitnehmern zu Arbeitgebern im Arbeitsmarkt einher. Dies spiegelt sich auch in einem steigenden Sortierungsgrad des Arbeitsmarkts wider. Wir entwickeln eine neue Methode zur Messung dieses Sortierungsgrades, welche die jeweiligen Beitrage von Arbeitnehmer- und Arbeitgeberheterogenitat zur Lohnungleichheit entflechtet. Inspiriert von theoretischen Modellen der Arbeitsmarktsortierung leiten wir die Produktivitat der arbeitgebenden Unternehmen aus Schatzungen von Produktionsfunktionen auf der Firmenebene ab. Wir berucksichtigen dabei insbesondere, dass die Firmenproduktivitat auf der Matchebene mit der Leistungsfahigkeit der einzelnen Arbeitnehmer interagieren konnte. Anhand deutscher Daten beobachten wir, dass hochproduktive Firmen niedrige Lohnquoten aufweisen, in konzentrierten Markten operieren und geringere Lohne zahlen als weniger produktive Firmen. Der Sortierungsgrad ist positiv aber niedriger als lohnbasierte Mase nahelegen. Er steigt mit der Zeit, getrieben durch neue Matches zwischen relativ unproduktiven Firmen und weniger leistungsfahigen Arbeitnehmern. An der Spitze geht der Sortierungsgrad zuruck, was sich darin widerspiegelt, dass Arbeitnehmer die produktivsten Firmen, die relativ geringe Lohne zahlen, verlassen. Wir diskutieren Implikationen unserer Ergebnisse fur die Interpretation steigender Lohnungleichheit.

This paper analyzes whether technological change improves equality of labor market opportunities by decreasing returns to parental background. We find that in Germany during the 1990s, computerization improved the access to technologyadopting occupations for workers with low-educated parents, and reduced their wage penalty within these occupations. We also show that this significantly contributed to a decline in the overall wage penalty experienced by workers from disadvantaged parental backgrounds over this time period. Competing mechanisms, such as skill-specific labor supply shocks and skill-upgrading, do not explain these findings.