Research

This keynote address was delivered during the CWEC Luncheon of the meetings of the Canadian Economic Association (CEA) in Winnipeg, MA on June 2nd, 2023. It synthesizes recent research, much of it from the 2020s, on the professional obstacles faced by women with PhD in Economics over the course of their careers. The address focuses on concerns from entry and graduation from PhD Programs to field of specialization, first  jobs in and outside of academia,  the "publish or perish" special issues for women toward tenure promotion, the role of children and parental leaves, unto recognition and awards, and conclude with remedies.

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This paper investigates whether and how the “Black Lives Matter” (BLM) protests turned the 2020 presidential election. Using as exogenous source of variation rainfall across US counties, FD-IV results show that local protests causally increased the Democratic vote share by 1.2 percentage points overall and 1.9 in swing states. BLM protests also reduced the share of eligible voters choosing the Republican candidate in these states. ANES (2016-2020) data confirm that increasingly warmer feelings towards BLM are associated with more Republican and white registered voters switching and Independent registered voters abstaining. Predictions suggest BLM protests help flipped three crucial swing states Democrat. 

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This paper estimates the causal effect of managerial homophily (getting a same-sex manager) on employee pay in the US Federal civil service. Using over 30 years of detailed payroll data, we exploit the appointment of new managers in an event study design. Same-sex managers are particularly important for female employees, whose pay increases by an additional 1.5 log points relative to their male counterparts. A novel finding shows that same-sex managers have the largest effect on employees in less routine jobs within education levels. Far from being an artifact of a bygone age, these effects are increasingly present across the four political eras we study. Managerial homophily operates through increases in pay grades and occupational changes. It has a larger impact on women's careers when there is a critical mass of women in the office. We conclude that even highly regimented pay systems are not immune to discretionary managerial actions. Female representation in managerial roles is a key determinant of women's career trajectories, likely enhanced by the decline in routine jobs.

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This paper argues that changes in the returns to occupational tasks have contributed to changes in the wage distribution over the last three decades. Using Current Population Survey (CPS) data, we first show that the 1990s polarization of wages is explained by changes in wage setting between and within occupations, which are well captured by tasks measures linked to technological change and offshorability. Using a decomposition based on Firpo, Fortin, and Lemieux (2009), we find that technological change and de-unionization played a central role in the 1980s and 1990s, while offshorability became an important factor from the 1990s onwards.

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This paper uses two complementary approaches to estimate the effect of right-to-work (RTW) laws on wages and unionization rates. The first approach uses an event study design to analyze the impact of the adoption of RTW laws in five US states since 2011. The second approach relies on a differential exposure design that exploits the differential impact of RTW laws on industries with high unionization rates relative to industries with low unionization rates. Both approaches indicate that RTW laws lower wages and unionization rates. Under the assumption that RTW laws only affect wages by lowering the unionization rate, RTW can be used as an instrumental variable (IV) to estimate the causal effect of unions on wages. In our preferred specification based on the differential exposure design, the IV estimate of the effect of unions on wages is 0.35, which substantially exceeds the corresponding OLS estimate of 0.16. This large wage effect suggests that RTW may also directly affect wages due to a reduced union threat effect.

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This discussion of The Economics Gains from Equity  by Buckman, Choi, Daly, and Seitelman (2021)  comes from viewpoint of the labor economist in terms of policies that might help materialize the gains. These policies include immigration policies, affirmative action measures, and labor market institutions, namely, labor unions and minimum wages. These two last sets of measures long protected the most vulnerable workers, including minorities. Indeed, Farber and others (2021) find that from the 1940s to the 1990s, unions conferred a sizeable (10–20 percent) family income premia to non-white and less educated households, who were overrepresented among union members. Using compelling research designs, Derenoncourt and Montialoux (2021) show that the 1967 extension of the minimum wage accounts for more than 20 percent of the reduction in the racial earnings and income gap during the civil rights era. However, these institutions have been eroded since the 1980s (DiNardo, Fortin, and Lemieux 1996), a decade earlier than the facts documented in this paper. The stylized facts presented below will suggest a potential role for the erosion of institutions in the lack of improvement in the labor market outcomes of minority groups, especially Black workers. 

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This paper examines the role of spillover effects of minimum wages and threat effects of unionization in changes in wage inequality in the United States between 1979 and 2017. A distribution regression framework is introduced to estimate both types of spillover effects.  Threat effects double the contribution of de-unionization to the increase in male wage inequality.  Spillover effects magnify the explanatory power of declining minimum wages to two-thirds of the increase in inequality at the bottom end of the female wage distribution.

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This paper retraces the evolution of Canadian women’s labour force participation and of the gender earnings ratio across the generations to understand better the prospects for gender convergence in pay. Using administrative annual earnings data from the LWF, as well as public use LFS data, the paper assesses the role of increasing top income inequality in the persistence of the gender pay gap. Having identified a substantial role for vertical gender segregation, the paper then performs a critical analysis of the impact of existing gender equality policies centered on horizontal occupational gender segregation and discusses alternative policies for the future.

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Using the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) surveys (2003-2015), this paper explores the relationship between the gender gap in math test scores and computer (digital devices) gaming, as a potential "swimming upstream" factor in the quest to close that gap. Using a decomposition based on a pooled hybrid specification, we attribute 2-3 points (from 13% to 29%) of the gender math gap to gender differences in the incidence and returns to intense gaming. The comparison of the negative vs. positive girl-specific effects found for collaborative games vs. single-player games suggests a potential role for gaming network effects.

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[accordion title="<strong>his updated paper provides a detailed exposition of an extension of the Oaxaca-Blinder decomposition method that can be applied to various distributional measures. The two-stage procedure first divides distributional changes into a wage structure effect and a composition effect using a reweighting method. Second, the two components are further divided into the contribution of each explanatory variable using recentered influence function (RIF) regressions. We illustrate the practical aspects of the procedure by analyzing how the polarization of U.S. male wages between the late 1980s and the mid 2010s was affected by factors such as de-unionization, education, occupations, and industry changes.

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This paper reviews the basic principles of inequality measurement, underlining the advantages and shortcomings of alternative measures from a theoretical standpoint and in the context of the study of the distribution of wealth. Adopting the two most popular measures, the Gini index and the P-shares, the paper documents wealth inequality in Canada using the 1999, 2005, and 2012 Survey of Financial Security (SFS). It carries out several decompositions with covariates, featuring DFL-type reweighting methods, and Gini and P-shares RIF-regressions. The latter parallel decompositions deepen our understanding of how changes in socio-demographic characteristics, including the compensating role of family formation and human capital, impact wealth inequality.

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This paper explores the consequences of the under-representation of women in top jobs for the overall gender pay gap. Using administrative annual earnings data from Canada, Sweden, and the United Kingdom, it applies the approach used in the analysis of earnings inequality in top incomes, as well as reweighing techniques, to the analysis of the gender pay gap. The analysis is supplemented by classic O-B decompositions of hourly wages using data from the Canadian and U.K. Labour Force Surveys. The paper finds that recent increases in top incomes led to substantial "swimming upstream" effects, therefore accounting for differential progress in the gender pay gap across time periods and a growing share of the gap unexplained by traditional factors.

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