Abstract: Women are more likely than men to work in low-hours jobs, which are associated with lower hourly wages and are disproportionately impacted by minimum wage policies. To quantify the gendered effects, we build and estimate an equilibrium search model that incorporates demographic and firm productivity heterogeneity, as well as jobs differing in both wages and hours requirements. The model replicates observed gender gaps in employment, hours worked, and wages, as well as the positive relationship between hours and hourly wages. We implement the minimum wage in our model with a penalty to address non-compliance. Using this framework, we find that Germany's initial 8.5 euro minimum wage reallocates women toward higher-hours jobs, reducing non-employment. Firm adjustments, however, dampen this effect by raising wages for low-hours jobs, making them relatively more attractive. Enhanced enforcement of the minimum wage amplifies the upward reallocation for women. Finally, we examine the effects of higher minimum wages, finding that increases up to 14 euro reduce both the gender wage and hours-worked gaps. At 11 euro, 44.8% of the reduction in the gender income gap is attributable to changes in hours worked.

Abstract: We develop and estimate an equilibrium labor market model to quantify the respective roles of labor supply and demand in generating gender earnings gaps over the life cycle. Households with and without children jointly choose specialization, while firms offer wages anticipating endogenous labor supply responses and incorporating gender-specific preferences, job search and productivity wedges. Using German longitudinal household data, we find that labor supply factors account for approximately 60 percent of the gender earnings gap over the life cycle, primarily reflecting gender differences in preferences for work. Firm-side forces are also quantitatively important: statistical discrimination explains 15 percent of the gap, while gender wedges on the side of firms account for 26 percent. We show that parental leave policies generate a persistent decline in female earnings, driven by sustained reductions in hours worked. Counterfactual reforms reducing leave duration and allowance increase fathers' leave uptake and narrow gender gaps in the short run, but have limited long-run effects.

Abstract: This paper studies the effects of wealth taxation on efficiency, equity, and welfare in a heterogeneous-agent model with incomplete markets and endogenous occupational and legal-form choice. Entrepreneurs choose between operating as pass-through businesses or C-corporations, which differ in both their tax treatment and their access to external finance. While C-corporations incur fixed operating costs, they benefit from weaker collateral constraints, implying that legal-form choice jointly determines the after-tax returns to entrepreneurial investment and the tightness of financial constraints. Calibrating the model to the U.S. economy, we show that the efficiency effects of wealth taxation depend crucially on the endogenous reallocation of entrepreneurs across legal forms. Revenue-neutral reforms that induce entrepreneurs to switch toward pass-through businesses amplify the efficiency costs of wealth taxation by tightening financial constraints and worsening capital misallocation within the entrepreneurial sector. By contrast, reforms that encourage entrepreneurs to organize as C-corporations relax financial constraints, improve capital allocation, and can more than offset the adverse effects of the wealth tax. We further show that the the distributional and welfare effects crucially depend on the design of the wealth tax itself. A flat wealth tax is ineffective at reducing inequality but generates aggregate welfare gains under revenue neutrality. By contrast, a progressive wealth tax reduces income and wealth inequality but may generate aggregate welfare losses because of its stronger adverse effects on entrepreneurial activity, capital accumulation, and aggregate output.