Pure-Chance Jobs versus a Labor Market: The Impact on Careers of a Random Serial Dictatorship for First Job Seekers

By Ashna Arora, Leonard Goff, and Jonas Hjort

AEA Papers and Proceedings, May 2021

Do workers' first jobs affect their careers? Do such first-job effects (FJEs) vary across worker types? If so, can policy improve upon a "free" labor market by altering initial worker-employer matches? We study these questions using Norway's pre–2013 sy...

Initial Industry and Long-Term Earnings Growth

By Stephen L. Ross and Patralekha Ukil

AEA Papers and Proceedings, May 2021

We test whether employment growth in a male worker's initial industry influences earnings growth using the 1979 National Longitudinal Survey of Youth. We follow workers for 20 years after reporting their first industry, finding that lower employment growt...

The Distributional Impacts of Active Labor Market Programs for Indigenous Populations

By Donna Feir, Kelly Foley, and Maggie E. C. Jones

AEA Papers and Proceedings, May 2021

We evaluate the distributional impacts of active labor market programming for indigenous peoples in Canada. Using administrative data and an empirical strategy that compares participants in high-intensity programs—skills interventions, job-creation part...

Gaming Opportunities: American Indian Casinos, Cash Transfers, and Income Mobility on the Reservation

By Emilia Simeonova, Randall Akee, and Maggie R. Jones

AEA Papers and Proceedings, May 2021

We examine the impact of the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act on the income rank of American Indian (AI) reservation residents. We assemble a panel dataset at the individual level for tax filers residing on AI reservations in 1989. We examine the effect of ca...

Ownership and Trust in Banks: Evidence from the First Bank in an American Indian Nation

By Donna Feir, Rachel L. Wellhausen, and Calvin Thrall

AEA Papers and Proceedings, May 2021

In collaboration with an American Indian nation, we conducted a survey that is the first of its kind in Indian Country. The survey explored tribal members' financial experiences in the months before the first bank opened on their reservation. In this arti...

Disparities in Health Care and Medical Evaluations by Gender: A Review of Evidence and Mechanisms

By Marika Cabral and Marcus Dillender

AEA Papers and Proceedings, May 2021

Male and female patients often receive different medical evaluations and treatment even when they have the same symptoms, and relative to men, women are less likely to receive benefits within social insurance programs that rely on medical evaluations. Thi...

COVID-19 Disruptions Disproportionately Affect Female Academics

By Tatyana Deryugina, Olga Shurchkov, and Jenna Stearns

AEA Papers and Proceedings, May 2021

The rapid spread of the COVID-19 pandemic and subsequent countermeasures disrupted economic activity around the world. We investigate the effects of COVID-19 disruptions on the gender gap in academia. We administer a global survey of academics to collect ...

Up the Political Ladder: Gender Parity in the Effects of Electoral Defeats

By Melanie Wasserman

AEA Papers and Proceedings, May 2021

This paper investigates whether an electoral defeat has different effects on the subsequent political involvement of male and female candidates for state office. Using US state legislative election returns from 1972 to 2010 and a regression discontinuity ...

Information, Confidence, and the Gender Gap in Bargaining

By Barbara Biasi and Heather Sarsons

AEA Papers and Proceedings, May 2021

We test whether the observed difference in the propensity to negotiate between men and women can be explained by gender differences in information about other people's negotiating experiences and outcomes and by confidence in one's abilities and in talkin...

Changes in the US Gender Gap in Wages in the 1960s

By Martha J. Bailey, Thomas Helgerman, and Bryan A. Stuart

AEA Papers and Proceedings, May 2021

The 1960s witnessed landmark legislation that aimed to increase women's wages, including the Equal Pay Act of 1963, Title VII of the Civil Rights Act, and the 1966 amendments to the Fair Labor Standards Act. Although the gender gap in pay changed little a...

Work-Care Balance over the Day and the Gender Wage Gap

By German Cubas, Chinhui Juhn, and Pedro Silos

AEA Papers and Proceedings, May 2021

We focus on the timing of labor supplied during the day and its interaction with home care responsibilities. Using the American Time Use Survey, we measure the incidence of household care activities between 8 AM and 5 PM (the prime time of the day). Women...

Do Male and Female Students Use Networks Differently?

By Yana Gallen and Melanie Wasserman

AEA Papers and Proceedings, May 2021

Gender differences in professional networks have been shown to contribute to men and women's disparate labor market outcomes. This gap could be due to differences in network access, differences in network usage, or both. Using novel administrative data fr...

Promoting Female Interest in Economics: Limits to Nudges

By Todd Pugatch and Elizabeth Schroeder

AEA Papers and Proceedings, May 2021

We assess whether light-touch interventions can increase the proportion of women who study economics. Over 2,000 students were randomly assigned to receive a message with basic information about the economics major, the basic message combined with an emph...

Can Positive Feedback Encourage Female and Minority Undergraduates into Economics?

By Kelly Bedard, Jacqueline Dodd, and Shelly Lundberg

AEA Papers and Proceedings, May 2021

In a field experiment designed to encourage undergraduate women and underrepresented minority students to study economics, we send personalized letters to students completing introductory economics classes inviting them to an informational meeting. A rand...

Info.Econ: Increasing Diversity among Economics Majors

By Andrea Chambers, Stacy Dickert-Conlin, Carey Elder, Steven J. Haider, and Scott Imberman

AEA Papers and Proceedings, May 2021

We analyze an intervention that provided information from diverse voices about breadth, opportunities, and grade distributions in economics. In 2020, the year of a global pandemic, randomized control trials delivered videos/infographics and letters to stu...

Women in Academic Economics: Have We Made Progress?

By Donna K. Ginther and Shulamit Kahn

AEA Papers and Proceedings, May 2021

This study uses data from Academic Analytics to examine gender differences in promotion to associate professor in economics. We found that women in economics were 15 percent less likely to be promoted to associate professor after controlling for cumulativ...

Gender Differences in Fields of Specialization and Placement Outcomes among PhDs in Economics

By Nicole Fortin, Thomas Lemieux, and Marit Rehavi

AEA Papers and Proceedings, May 2021

This paper investigates the impact of gender differences in field of specialization on gender disparities in job placement among recent economics PhD candidates. Women are underrepresented as assistant professors, especially at top-50 institutions, and ov...

Does Mentoring Increase the Collaboration Networks of Female Economists? An Evaluation of the CeMENT Randomized Trial

By Donna K. Ginther and Rina Na

AEA Papers and Proceedings, May 2021

Previous research has shown that women in the treatment group of the CeMENT randomized controlled trial increased their publications and the likelihood that they were tenured in top-50 economics departments. This paper examines one potential mechanism, na...

Field Specializations among Beginning Economists: Are There Gender Differences?

By Eva Sierminska and Ronald L. Oaxaca

AEA Papers and Proceedings, May 2021

We examine the process underlying field specialization among beginning economists. Our multivariate logit framework accommodates single- and dual-field specializations with correlated choices. Including field-specific relative salaries and expected probab...

"Placebo Tests" for the Impacts of Air Pollution on Health: The Challenge of Limited Health Care Infrastructure

By Bruna Guidetti, Paula Pereda, and Edson Severnini

AEA Papers and Proceedings, May 2021

"Placebo tests" are normally used to support evidence of pollution impacts on health outcomes. In this study, we argue that one should be cautious to proceed with falsification tests. We examine how a large metropolitan area in Brazil copes with increased...