顶刊方法追踪

Abstract Using Danish registry data, we study how managers’ gender attitudes shape gender inequality in the workplace by exploiting the birth of a daughter—as opposed to a son—as a plausibly exogenous shock to male managers’ gender attitudes. Comparing within-firm changes in women’s labour outcomes depending on the gender of the manager’s newborn child, we find that women’s relative earnings and employment increase by 4.4% and 2.9%, respectively, following the birth of the manager’s first daughter. These effects are driven by an increase in managers’ propensity to substitute male hires with female hires that have comparable education, hours worked, and earnings. Consistent with this substitution channel, we do not detect any significant effect on firm performance. Because these effects emerge rapidly and persist over time, we can rule out the need for prolonged exposure to gender issues or for personal incentives tied to improving conditions for their own daughters as prerequisites for managers to promote gender equality within their firms.

Abstract Do higher aspirations for the future motivate people living in poverty to make long-term investments? Do their aspirations increase when economic conditions improve? To answer these questions, we run a 415-village field experiment with 8,300 women living in poverty in rural Kenya. We design an 80-minute workshop to help people set higher aspirations and plan to achieve them. We cross-randomise this with large unconditional cash transfers. The workshop substantially raises aspirations, labour supply, investment, revenue, and living standards 17 months later, relative to a placebo workshop. Increases in aspirations are the most likely mechanism to explain the economic effects. Cash transfers also raise aspirations, which might help to explain why transfers increase labour supply and investment. We conclude that aspirations respond to both economic and psychological interventions, contribute to investment decisions and living standards, and are important considerations for development policy.

Abstract Germany experienced a sharp rise in wage inequality over the two decades leading up to the Great Recession. However, a remarkable trend reversal occurred in 2010—well before the introduction of the minimum wage in 2015—when wages at the bottom of the distribution began to grow more rapidly than those higher up. This paper attributes the reversal to an increasingly tight labor market after the Great Recession, supported by strong domestic demand, and operating through several interrelated and mutually reinforcing channels. Consistent with this hypothesis, job-to-job transition rates and between-job wage growth rose markedly after the recession, especially for workers at the lower rungs of the job ladder. Concurrently, workers increasingly moved from low-paying to higher-paying firms, compressing the worker-weighted distribution of firm wage premia. Tighter labor markets also reduced assortative matching between workers and firms, lowered the skill premium, and weakened firms’ monopsony power.