CSMGEP Dissertation Session
Paper Session
Friday, Jan. 5, 2024 8:00 AM - 10:00 AM (CST)
This session will be streamed live.
- Chair: Neville Francis, University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill
Homophily in the Labor Market: Evidence from the Gig Economy
Abstract
This paper documents the existence of homophily in an online freelance marketplace. Digital platforms have created important new forms of employment. However, the design of these platforms has the potential to introduce and/or intensify bias. A key design choice is the use of real names and profile photos which is meant to engender trust, but also makes gender, race, and other characteristics more salient. I add to the literature on bias on digital labor platforms by measuring gender and racial homophily (specifically the tendency of clients to hire freelancers of the same gender or race) in the setting of an online freelance marketplace for foreign language tutoring. I find consistent evidence for gender homophily. The female share of tutors a student matches with is 5.5 percentage points higher for female students. I also find several sources of heterogeneity and some suggestive evidence for racial homophily.Examining State R&D Policies and Federal Grant Opportunities: Analyzing the Effect on Small High-Tech Businesses from Socially Disadvantaged Groups
Abstract
This paper examines how state R&D policy affects federal grant opportunities for high-tech startups from socially disadvantaged groups. I examine how state research and development (R&D) tax credits for startups owned by women and ethnic minorities affect engagement in the federal Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) program, which is explicitly charged with encouraging minority and disadvantaged participation in technological innovation. Employing a doubly robust, staggered difference-in-differences estimator, I leverage variation in the implementation of state R&D tax credit programs to examine the impact on all startups, as well as the differential effects by race and gender. The results suggest that the impact of R&D policies on SBIR success for both underrepresented and non-underrepresented businesses varies by state, with underrepresented entrepreneurs showing post-implementation trends similar to non-underrepresented entrepreneurs.International Production Networks and Economic Growth: Evidence from the U.S. Semiconductor Industry
Abstract
This paper investigates the extent and the mechanisms through which a shock to the semiconductor industry impacts U.S. economic growth. I use a historical perspective and network approach to examine the evolution of semiconductor sector’s role in the structural changes of the U.S. economy during the period of 1967-2012. Exploiting detailed input output tables from the Bureau of Economic Analysis and data on 364 industries from NBER CES manufacturing database, I combine network tools and a dynamic panel estimation to quantify the importance of semiconductor on U.S. GDP. My findings suggest that a one standard deviation shock to the semiconductor productivity would induce a 6% change of U.S. aggregate output. The supply effect of semiconductor’s role in the intersectoral linkages of U.S. economy explain 98% of this impact while the demand effect is insignificant. I identify and quantify semiconductor’s scale, scope, and speed effects in the network as the mechanisms driving its growing influence on U.S. economy. My study contributes to the vision to increase U.S. domestic production of semiconductor.Discussant(s)
Ioana Marinescu
,
University of Pennsylvania
Matthew Notowidigdo
,
University of Chicago
Scott Stern
,
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Kim Ruhl
,
University of Wisconsin-Madison
JEL Classifications
- E0 - General
- J0 - General