Parochial altruism refers to the propensity to direct prosocial behavior toward members of one... more Parochial altruism refers to the propensity to direct prosocial behavior toward members of one's own ingroup to a greater extent than toward those outside one's group. Both theory and empirical research suggest that parochialism may be linked to political ideology, with conservatives more likely than liberals to exhibit ingroup bias in altruistic behavior. The present study, conducted in the United States and Italy, tested this relationship in the context of the COVID‐19 pandemic, assessing willingness to contribute money to charities at different levels of inclusiveness—local versus national versus international. Results indicated that conservatives contributed less money overall and were more likely to limit their contribution to the local charity while liberals were significantly more likely to contribute to national and international charities, exhibiting less parochialism. Conservatives and liberals also differed in social identification and trust, with conservatives higher in social identity and trust at the local and national levels and liberals higher in global social identity and trust in global others. Differences in global social identity partially accounted for the effects of political ideology on donations.
The authors deploy a measure of occupational mismatch based on the discrepancy between the portfo... more The authors deploy a measure of occupational mismatch based on the discrepancy between the portfolio of skills required by an occupation and the array of abilities possessed by the worker for learning those skills. Using data from the Occupational Information Network (O*NET) and the 1979 and 1997 National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (NLSY79 and NLSY97), they report distinct gender differences in match quality and changes in match quality over the course of careers. They also show that a substantial portion of the gender wage gap stems from match quality differences among the college educated. College-educated females show a significantly greater likelihood of mismatch than do males. Moreover, individuals with children and those in more flexible occupations tend to experience a larger degree of mismatch. Cohort effects are also evident in the data: College-educated males of the younger cohort (NLSY97) are worse off in terms of match quality compared to the older cohort (NLSY79), eve...
Due to the COVID-19 pandemic our behavior has changed, and together with it our direct and indire... more Due to the COVID-19 pandemic our behavior has changed, and together with it our direct and indirect impact on the natural environment. Recent studies have demonstrated the positive consequences of lockdown on air pollution levels, showing how has declined up to 30% in some Covid-19 epicenters such as Wuhan, China, and also in Italy, U.S., Canada, etc. The public awareness of the importance of environmental-related topics during the COVID-19 crisis seems to have followed a two-phase evolution. At a first stage, people experienced an increasing awareness of the direct effect of our behavior on natural resources and on the importance of green local spaces. At a second stage, an overall sense of urgency to tackle climate change has dissipated but, together with it, the economic downturn following the health crisis has brought to the fore the longstanding issue of the trade-off between environmental values and economic gains. The goal of our research is to examine the effects of COVID-19...
Computer-based testing (CBT) is becoming an increasingly popular format of assessment in educatio... more Computer-based testing (CBT) is becoming an increasingly popular format of assessment in educational settings. If students face a digital divide in terms of access to computers at school and at home, CBT may exacerbate measured student achievement gaps. In this paper, we use the rollout of CBT in South Carolina starting in 2015 to investigate its effect on measured student performance. We link student-level test scores and poverty measures to the share of students taking CBT in a grade of a school and show that CBT has a significant negative impact on test scores of multiple subjects. The negative impact is not uniform across student subgroups but rather particularly large for students in poor households. There is little evidence that the effect fades as students and schools become more experienced with computerized testing. These results suggest that the testing mode change might have distributional consequences. However, we do find a smaller effect in schools where technology is m...
We investigate profit-maximizing versioning plans for an information goods monopolist. The analys... more We investigate profit-maximizing versioning plans for an information goods monopolist. The analysis employs data obtained from a web-based field experiment in which potential buyers were offered information goods in varied price-quality configurations. Maximum simulated likelihood (MSL) methods are used to estimate parameters describing the distribution of utility function parameters across potential buyers of the good. The resulting estimates are used to examine the impact of versioning on seller profits and market efficiency.
This paper structurally models and estimates the employment e¤ects of a minimum wage regulation i... more This paper structurally models and estimates the employment e¤ects of a minimum wage regulation in an inexible labor market with xed employment costs. When there are xed costs associated with employment, minimum-wage regulation not only results in a reduction in employment among low-productivity workers but also shifts the distribution of hours for the available jobs in the market, resulting in a scarcity of part-time jobs. Thus, for su ¢ ciently high employment costs, a minimum wage makes it less likely for "marginal " workers to enter and stay in the labor market. I estimate the model using survey data from Turkey. I nd a signi cant reduction in employment due to the loss of part-time jobs caused by the national minimum-wage policy in this highly inexible labor market.
We perform an online survey experiment to address the research question of whether altruism has e... more We perform an online survey experiment to address the research question of whether altruism has exclusively a parochial nature or can be more cosmopolitan in character when people are exposed to the existential threat of the COVID-19 pandemic. Relatedly, we want to examine whether framing the pandemic as a local, national, or global problem affects the overall level of altruism and its character – namely, whether it tends to become more or less parochial or is unaffected. Finally, we want to understand whether greater exposure to the existential threat associated with the pandemic increases or decreases altruism.
WGSRN: Segregation by Gender & Race (Sub-Topic), 2017
Job mobility, especially early in a career, is an important source of wage growth. This effect is... more Job mobility, especially early in a career, is an important source of wage growth. This effect is typically attributed to heterogeneity in the quality of employee-employer matches, with individuals learning of their abilities and discovering the tasks at which they are most productive through job search. That is, job mobility enables better matches, and individuals move to better their labor market prospects and settle once they find a satisfactory match. In this paper, we show that there are gender differences in match quality and changes in match quality over the course of careers. Some females, even those with the best early career matches, do indeed experience greater mismatch than males. However, the direction of the gender effect differs significantly by education: only college-educated females are more mismatched and are more likely to be over-qualified then their male counterparts. These results are seemingly driven by life events, such as child birth. For their part, colleg...
In this paper, we explore whether the alignment of the date a household receives Supplemental Nut... more In this paper, we explore whether the alignment of the date a household receives Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits with the start of the calendar month affects the smoothness of household monthly expenditures. Across states, what day in the calendar month households receive SNAP benefits varies substantially. Further, other income sources (including transfer payments) and many regular household expenditures (e.g., rent) tend to arrive near the beginning of the calendar month. If the alignment of SNAP benefit receipt with the start of the calendar month reduces expenditure smoothing, there may be important health and behavioral impacts for the SNAP population. Our main result is that increasing the median SNAP distribution date in a state by 10 days reduces the standard deviation of weekly spending by 0.23 dollars or approximately 6.5% for SNAP-eligible households. Results are robust to alternative measures of SNAP date distribution and expenditure smoothing.
Theory posits that situations of existential threat will enhance prosociality in general and part... more Theory posits that situations of existential threat will enhance prosociality in general and particularly toward others perceived as belonging to the same group as the individual (parochial altruism). Yet, the global character of the COVID-19 pandemic may blur boundaries between ingroups and outgroups and engage altruism at a broader level. In an online experiment, participants from the U.S. and Italy chose whether to allocate a monetary bonus to a charity active in COVID-19 relief efforts at the local, national, or international level. The purpose was to address two important questions about charitable giving in this context: first, what influences the propensity to give, and second, how is charitable giving distributed across different levels of collective welfare? We found that personal exposure to COVID-19 increased donations relative to those not exposed, even as levels of environmental exposure (numbers of cases locally) had no effect. With respect to targets of giving, we fou...
One of the more salient aspects of the opioid crisis in America has been the disparate impact it ... more One of the more salient aspects of the opioid crisis in America has been the disparate impact it has had on communities. This paper considers the possibility that opioid abuse might have negative spillovers onto student performance in schools within the communities most affected. We use administrative data on individual children's test scores (grades 3 through 8) in South Carolina from the 2005-06 to 2016-17 academic years. These data are then linked to county-level changes in opioid prescriptions rates. Findings show that an increase in the opioid prescription rate in a county is associated with a statistically significant reduction in white student test scores, but no such decline was found among non-white students. This relationship is robust to controls for changing county-level economic conditions, time-varying controls for student-level poverty, county characteristics, and county time trends. Among white students, the association is strongest among rural students in households that are not receiving SNAP or TANF benefits. Given the importance of educational attainment, this reduction in test scores associated with high rates of opioid prescriptions may indicate that there will be long-lasting spillover effects of the opioid crisis.
Any opinions expressed in this paper are those of the author(s) and not those of IZA. Research pu... more Any opinions expressed in this paper are those of the author(s) and not those of IZA. Research published in this series may include views on policy, but IZA takes no institutional policy positions. The IZA research network is committed to the IZA Guiding Principles of Research Integrity. The IZA Institute of Labor Economics is an independent economic research institute that conducts research in labor economics and offers evidence-based policy advice on labor market issues. Supported by the Deutsche Post Foundation, IZA runs the world's largest network of economists, whose research aims to provide answers to the global labor market challenges of our time. Our key objective is to build bridges between academic research, policymakers and society. IZA Discussion Papers often represent preliminary work and are circulated to encourage discussion. Citation of such a paper should account for its provisional character. A revised version may be available directly from the author.
Poor nutrition has been established as an important determinant of health. It has also been demon... more Poor nutrition has been established as an important determinant of health. It has also been demonstrated that the single monthly treatment of SNAP benefits leaves meaningful deficiencies in recipient households during the final weeks of their benefit cycle. Additionally, the day that households receive benefits is shown to be associated with changes in household behavior. This project exploits linked administrative data on health care utilization and randomized food stamp receipt dates to allow us to examine how receipt date affects both ER usage on SNAP receipt date and whether ER utilization is changed near the end of the benefit cycle month. We find no overall increase in ER usage at the end of the benefit month, except for individuals 55 and over. Within this older population, the share of ER visits that comes from individuals that are past the third week of their SNAP benefit month, i.e. received benefits more than 21 days ago, is 1.67% larger than would be expected. Notably, this effect is much larger when the end of the benefit cycle coincides with the end of the calendar month. This suggests that within this older group, increased food insecurity leads to increased ER utilization. On the day of SNAP benefit receipt we find that the share of ER visitors that received benefits on that day is 3.1% lower than would be expected. This effect is present across all age groups, although the magnitude is smallest for young children. Further, analysis of time-use data presents additional support for time use reallocation on receipt days, while an investigation of specific conditions is consistent with the ER utilization decline being related to a drop in less urgent conditions.
The impact of poor nutrition has been established as an important determinant of learning and ach... more The impact of poor nutrition has been established as an important determinant of learning and achievement among school aged children. It has also been demonstrated that the single monthly treatment of food stamps leaves meaningful nutritional deficiencies in recipient households during the final weeks of the benefits cycle. This paper exploits detailed administrative data on standardized math tests scores and randomized food stamp receipt dates to allow us to measure the impact of these low nutritional periods on student performance. Our main results are that scores are notably lower when the exam falls near the end of the benefit cycle and when food stamps arrive on the four days immediately preceding the exam. While both boys and girls experienced a similar penalty with receipt near the end of the cycle, the effect from receipt just prior to the exam appears to be partially explained by a large negative effect associated with weekend receipt, which coincides with the four days prior to the exam, that is concentrated among African-American boys. Our results provide evidence that households do not sufficiently smooth consumption and that this has measurable effects on student performance. The fact that weekend receipt differs suggests a behavioral response from households beyond food insecurity that also has meaningful effects.
Data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1979 indicate that between 1996 and 2010 fema... more Data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1979 indicate that between 1996 and 2010 females on average lost some of the promotion momentum they had achieved at the beginning of mid-career, although they outperformed males in this regard. For both genders economic downturn has contributed to reduced promotion probabilities. In the case of women, however, cohort effects rather than the cycle seem to explain the promotion experience during the Great Recession. Promotions translate into higher real wage increases, and typically more so where job responsibilities increase. Crowding effects, if not necessarily a thing of the past, are no longer manifested in reduced female promotion rates or earnings.
This paper examines the extent to which children enter into occupations that are different from t... more This paper examines the extent to which children enter into occupations that are different from their father's occupation, but require similar skills, which we call task following. We also consider the possibility that fathers are able to transfer task specific human capital either through investments or genetic endowments to their children. We show that there is indeed substantial task following, beyond occupational following and that task following is associated with a wage premium of around 5% over otherwise identical workers employed in a job with the same primary task. The wage premium is robust to controls for industry, occupation categories and occupation characteristics. The premium is largest for followers in non-routine cognitive jobs and college graduates.
Using international and intertemporal variations in minimum wages, employment protection laws, mi... more Using international and intertemporal variations in minimum wages, employment protection laws, minimum wage regulations and female work behavior within the OECD, empirical analysis provide evidence that higher minimum wages are associated with lower female labor force participation and employment. This association is more significant in countries with more stringent employment protection laws, lower female tertiary educational enrollment and higher fertility. In addition to the extensive margin analysis, it is shown that minimum wage levels are positively correlated with the ratio of part-time workers. That is, minimum wages are associated with not only lower participation and employment rates among women but also with higher marginalization of female work. This association is stronger in countries with more inflexible labor markets and less active labor market policies. Moreover, existence of a subminimum wage for youths implies further reduction of employment while increasing part-time job incidence for females, when the minimum wage increases.
Parochial altruism refers to the propensity to direct prosocial behavior toward members of one... more Parochial altruism refers to the propensity to direct prosocial behavior toward members of one's own ingroup to a greater extent than toward those outside one's group. Both theory and empirical research suggest that parochialism may be linked to political ideology, with conservatives more likely than liberals to exhibit ingroup bias in altruistic behavior. The present study, conducted in the United States and Italy, tested this relationship in the context of the COVID‐19 pandemic, assessing willingness to contribute money to charities at different levels of inclusiveness—local versus national versus international. Results indicated that conservatives contributed less money overall and were more likely to limit their contribution to the local charity while liberals were significantly more likely to contribute to national and international charities, exhibiting less parochialism. Conservatives and liberals also differed in social identification and trust, with conservatives higher in social identity and trust at the local and national levels and liberals higher in global social identity and trust in global others. Differences in global social identity partially accounted for the effects of political ideology on donations.
The authors deploy a measure of occupational mismatch based on the discrepancy between the portfo... more The authors deploy a measure of occupational mismatch based on the discrepancy between the portfolio of skills required by an occupation and the array of abilities possessed by the worker for learning those skills. Using data from the Occupational Information Network (O*NET) and the 1979 and 1997 National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (NLSY79 and NLSY97), they report distinct gender differences in match quality and changes in match quality over the course of careers. They also show that a substantial portion of the gender wage gap stems from match quality differences among the college educated. College-educated females show a significantly greater likelihood of mismatch than do males. Moreover, individuals with children and those in more flexible occupations tend to experience a larger degree of mismatch. Cohort effects are also evident in the data: College-educated males of the younger cohort (NLSY97) are worse off in terms of match quality compared to the older cohort (NLSY79), eve...
Due to the COVID-19 pandemic our behavior has changed, and together with it our direct and indire... more Due to the COVID-19 pandemic our behavior has changed, and together with it our direct and indirect impact on the natural environment. Recent studies have demonstrated the positive consequences of lockdown on air pollution levels, showing how has declined up to 30% in some Covid-19 epicenters such as Wuhan, China, and also in Italy, U.S., Canada, etc. The public awareness of the importance of environmental-related topics during the COVID-19 crisis seems to have followed a two-phase evolution. At a first stage, people experienced an increasing awareness of the direct effect of our behavior on natural resources and on the importance of green local spaces. At a second stage, an overall sense of urgency to tackle climate change has dissipated but, together with it, the economic downturn following the health crisis has brought to the fore the longstanding issue of the trade-off between environmental values and economic gains. The goal of our research is to examine the effects of COVID-19...
Computer-based testing (CBT) is becoming an increasingly popular format of assessment in educatio... more Computer-based testing (CBT) is becoming an increasingly popular format of assessment in educational settings. If students face a digital divide in terms of access to computers at school and at home, CBT may exacerbate measured student achievement gaps. In this paper, we use the rollout of CBT in South Carolina starting in 2015 to investigate its effect on measured student performance. We link student-level test scores and poverty measures to the share of students taking CBT in a grade of a school and show that CBT has a significant negative impact on test scores of multiple subjects. The negative impact is not uniform across student subgroups but rather particularly large for students in poor households. There is little evidence that the effect fades as students and schools become more experienced with computerized testing. These results suggest that the testing mode change might have distributional consequences. However, we do find a smaller effect in schools where technology is m...
We investigate profit-maximizing versioning plans for an information goods monopolist. The analys... more We investigate profit-maximizing versioning plans for an information goods monopolist. The analysis employs data obtained from a web-based field experiment in which potential buyers were offered information goods in varied price-quality configurations. Maximum simulated likelihood (MSL) methods are used to estimate parameters describing the distribution of utility function parameters across potential buyers of the good. The resulting estimates are used to examine the impact of versioning on seller profits and market efficiency.
This paper structurally models and estimates the employment e¤ects of a minimum wage regulation i... more This paper structurally models and estimates the employment e¤ects of a minimum wage regulation in an inexible labor market with xed employment costs. When there are xed costs associated with employment, minimum-wage regulation not only results in a reduction in employment among low-productivity workers but also shifts the distribution of hours for the available jobs in the market, resulting in a scarcity of part-time jobs. Thus, for su ¢ ciently high employment costs, a minimum wage makes it less likely for "marginal " workers to enter and stay in the labor market. I estimate the model using survey data from Turkey. I nd a signi cant reduction in employment due to the loss of part-time jobs caused by the national minimum-wage policy in this highly inexible labor market.
We perform an online survey experiment to address the research question of whether altruism has e... more We perform an online survey experiment to address the research question of whether altruism has exclusively a parochial nature or can be more cosmopolitan in character when people are exposed to the existential threat of the COVID-19 pandemic. Relatedly, we want to examine whether framing the pandemic as a local, national, or global problem affects the overall level of altruism and its character – namely, whether it tends to become more or less parochial or is unaffected. Finally, we want to understand whether greater exposure to the existential threat associated with the pandemic increases or decreases altruism.
WGSRN: Segregation by Gender & Race (Sub-Topic), 2017
Job mobility, especially early in a career, is an important source of wage growth. This effect is... more Job mobility, especially early in a career, is an important source of wage growth. This effect is typically attributed to heterogeneity in the quality of employee-employer matches, with individuals learning of their abilities and discovering the tasks at which they are most productive through job search. That is, job mobility enables better matches, and individuals move to better their labor market prospects and settle once they find a satisfactory match. In this paper, we show that there are gender differences in match quality and changes in match quality over the course of careers. Some females, even those with the best early career matches, do indeed experience greater mismatch than males. However, the direction of the gender effect differs significantly by education: only college-educated females are more mismatched and are more likely to be over-qualified then their male counterparts. These results are seemingly driven by life events, such as child birth. For their part, colleg...
In this paper, we explore whether the alignment of the date a household receives Supplemental Nut... more In this paper, we explore whether the alignment of the date a household receives Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits with the start of the calendar month affects the smoothness of household monthly expenditures. Across states, what day in the calendar month households receive SNAP benefits varies substantially. Further, other income sources (including transfer payments) and many regular household expenditures (e.g., rent) tend to arrive near the beginning of the calendar month. If the alignment of SNAP benefit receipt with the start of the calendar month reduces expenditure smoothing, there may be important health and behavioral impacts for the SNAP population. Our main result is that increasing the median SNAP distribution date in a state by 10 days reduces the standard deviation of weekly spending by 0.23 dollars or approximately 6.5% for SNAP-eligible households. Results are robust to alternative measures of SNAP date distribution and expenditure smoothing.
Theory posits that situations of existential threat will enhance prosociality in general and part... more Theory posits that situations of existential threat will enhance prosociality in general and particularly toward others perceived as belonging to the same group as the individual (parochial altruism). Yet, the global character of the COVID-19 pandemic may blur boundaries between ingroups and outgroups and engage altruism at a broader level. In an online experiment, participants from the U.S. and Italy chose whether to allocate a monetary bonus to a charity active in COVID-19 relief efforts at the local, national, or international level. The purpose was to address two important questions about charitable giving in this context: first, what influences the propensity to give, and second, how is charitable giving distributed across different levels of collective welfare? We found that personal exposure to COVID-19 increased donations relative to those not exposed, even as levels of environmental exposure (numbers of cases locally) had no effect. With respect to targets of giving, we fou...
One of the more salient aspects of the opioid crisis in America has been the disparate impact it ... more One of the more salient aspects of the opioid crisis in America has been the disparate impact it has had on communities. This paper considers the possibility that opioid abuse might have negative spillovers onto student performance in schools within the communities most affected. We use administrative data on individual children's test scores (grades 3 through 8) in South Carolina from the 2005-06 to 2016-17 academic years. These data are then linked to county-level changes in opioid prescriptions rates. Findings show that an increase in the opioid prescription rate in a county is associated with a statistically significant reduction in white student test scores, but no such decline was found among non-white students. This relationship is robust to controls for changing county-level economic conditions, time-varying controls for student-level poverty, county characteristics, and county time trends. Among white students, the association is strongest among rural students in households that are not receiving SNAP or TANF benefits. Given the importance of educational attainment, this reduction in test scores associated with high rates of opioid prescriptions may indicate that there will be long-lasting spillover effects of the opioid crisis.
Any opinions expressed in this paper are those of the author(s) and not those of IZA. Research pu... more Any opinions expressed in this paper are those of the author(s) and not those of IZA. Research published in this series may include views on policy, but IZA takes no institutional policy positions. The IZA research network is committed to the IZA Guiding Principles of Research Integrity. The IZA Institute of Labor Economics is an independent economic research institute that conducts research in labor economics and offers evidence-based policy advice on labor market issues. Supported by the Deutsche Post Foundation, IZA runs the world's largest network of economists, whose research aims to provide answers to the global labor market challenges of our time. Our key objective is to build bridges between academic research, policymakers and society. IZA Discussion Papers often represent preliminary work and are circulated to encourage discussion. Citation of such a paper should account for its provisional character. A revised version may be available directly from the author.
Poor nutrition has been established as an important determinant of health. It has also been demon... more Poor nutrition has been established as an important determinant of health. It has also been demonstrated that the single monthly treatment of SNAP benefits leaves meaningful deficiencies in recipient households during the final weeks of their benefit cycle. Additionally, the day that households receive benefits is shown to be associated with changes in household behavior. This project exploits linked administrative data on health care utilization and randomized food stamp receipt dates to allow us to examine how receipt date affects both ER usage on SNAP receipt date and whether ER utilization is changed near the end of the benefit cycle month. We find no overall increase in ER usage at the end of the benefit month, except for individuals 55 and over. Within this older population, the share of ER visits that comes from individuals that are past the third week of their SNAP benefit month, i.e. received benefits more than 21 days ago, is 1.67% larger than would be expected. Notably, this effect is much larger when the end of the benefit cycle coincides with the end of the calendar month. This suggests that within this older group, increased food insecurity leads to increased ER utilization. On the day of SNAP benefit receipt we find that the share of ER visitors that received benefits on that day is 3.1% lower than would be expected. This effect is present across all age groups, although the magnitude is smallest for young children. Further, analysis of time-use data presents additional support for time use reallocation on receipt days, while an investigation of specific conditions is consistent with the ER utilization decline being related to a drop in less urgent conditions.
The impact of poor nutrition has been established as an important determinant of learning and ach... more The impact of poor nutrition has been established as an important determinant of learning and achievement among school aged children. It has also been demonstrated that the single monthly treatment of food stamps leaves meaningful nutritional deficiencies in recipient households during the final weeks of the benefits cycle. This paper exploits detailed administrative data on standardized math tests scores and randomized food stamp receipt dates to allow us to measure the impact of these low nutritional periods on student performance. Our main results are that scores are notably lower when the exam falls near the end of the benefit cycle and when food stamps arrive on the four days immediately preceding the exam. While both boys and girls experienced a similar penalty with receipt near the end of the cycle, the effect from receipt just prior to the exam appears to be partially explained by a large negative effect associated with weekend receipt, which coincides with the four days prior to the exam, that is concentrated among African-American boys. Our results provide evidence that households do not sufficiently smooth consumption and that this has measurable effects on student performance. The fact that weekend receipt differs suggests a behavioral response from households beyond food insecurity that also has meaningful effects.
Data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1979 indicate that between 1996 and 2010 fema... more Data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1979 indicate that between 1996 and 2010 females on average lost some of the promotion momentum they had achieved at the beginning of mid-career, although they outperformed males in this regard. For both genders economic downturn has contributed to reduced promotion probabilities. In the case of women, however, cohort effects rather than the cycle seem to explain the promotion experience during the Great Recession. Promotions translate into higher real wage increases, and typically more so where job responsibilities increase. Crowding effects, if not necessarily a thing of the past, are no longer manifested in reduced female promotion rates or earnings.
This paper examines the extent to which children enter into occupations that are different from t... more This paper examines the extent to which children enter into occupations that are different from their father's occupation, but require similar skills, which we call task following. We also consider the possibility that fathers are able to transfer task specific human capital either through investments or genetic endowments to their children. We show that there is indeed substantial task following, beyond occupational following and that task following is associated with a wage premium of around 5% over otherwise identical workers employed in a job with the same primary task. The wage premium is robust to controls for industry, occupation categories and occupation characteristics. The premium is largest for followers in non-routine cognitive jobs and college graduates.
Using international and intertemporal variations in minimum wages, employment protection laws, mi... more Using international and intertemporal variations in minimum wages, employment protection laws, minimum wage regulations and female work behavior within the OECD, empirical analysis provide evidence that higher minimum wages are associated with lower female labor force participation and employment. This association is more significant in countries with more stringent employment protection laws, lower female tertiary educational enrollment and higher fertility. In addition to the extensive margin analysis, it is shown that minimum wage levels are positively correlated with the ratio of part-time workers. That is, minimum wages are associated with not only lower participation and employment rates among women but also with higher marginalization of female work. This association is stronger in countries with more inflexible labor markets and less active labor market policies. Moreover, existence of a subminimum wage for youths implies further reduction of employment while increasing part-time job incidence for females, when the minimum wage increases.
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