Research

Working Papers

Is Affirmative Action in Employment Still Effective in the 21st Century?

Cambridge Working Paper Series No. 2262, CES Working Paper Series No. CES-22-54

We study Executive Order 11246, an employment-based affirmative action policy targeted at firms holding contracts with the federal government. We find this policy to be ineffective in the 21st century, contrary to the positive effects found in the late 1900s (Miller, 2017). Our novel dataset combines data on federal contract acquisition and enforcement with US linked employer-employee Census data 2000–2014. We employ an event study around firms' acquiring a contract, based on Miller (2017), and find the policy had no effect on employment shares or on hiring, for any minority group. Next, we isolate the impact of the affirmative action plan, which is EO 11246's preeminent requirement that applies to firms with contracts over $50,000. Leveraging variation from this threshold in an event study and regression discontinuity design, we find similarly null effects. Last, we show that even randomized audits are not effective, suggesting weak enforcement. Our results highlight the importance of the recent budget increase for the enforcement agency, as well as recent policies enacted to improve compliance.

• Media Coverage: Yale ISPS

• Grants: Keynes Fund

Human Capital Accumulation, Equilibrium Wage-Setting, and the Life-Cycle Gender Pay Gap

Cambridge Working Papers in Economics No. 2010, R&R Quantitative Economics

We study how turnover and human capital dynamics shape the life-cycle gender pay gap when employers are forward-looking and able to set gender-specific wage rates. In our equilibrium wage-posting model with learning-by-doing and fertility events, the life-cycle gap can be attributed to worker productivity, job search, employers’ endogenous wage-setting, and job productivity. Estimating the model on NLSY79 data, we find that the high school and college gaps are driven by different forces, but employers' wage-setting accounts for one-third of the gap in both groups. Neglecting interactions between turnover and human capital dynamics biases down the estimated role of turnover substantially.

• Non-technical summary: Cambridge Economics alumni webinar series

Economics Coauthorships in the Aftermath of MeToo

We study the impact of the MeToo movement on coauthorships in economics, by analysing NBER and CEPR working papers between January 2004 and December 2020. Compared to the pre-MeToo levels, collaborations across gender increased: we estimate a 12.5% increase of women coauthors (per 100 men-authored papers). However, the movement overall led to a decline in new coauthorships, with senior researchers reducing new collaborations, especially with junior authors. In particular, they reduced their new collaborations with junior women by an estimated 33% (per 100 senior-authored papers). The onset of Covid-19 partially reversed these trends.

Online appendix

• Media Coverage: VoxEU

The Unequal Effects of COVID-19 on Economists’ Research Productivity

Cambridge Working Papers in Economics No. 2038

The current lockdown measures are expected to disproportionately reduce women’s labor productivity in the short run. This paper analyzes the effects of these measures on the research productivity among economists. We analyze the patterns of working papers publications using data from the NBER Working Papers Series, the CEPR Discussion Paper Series, the newly established preprint of Covid Economics: Vetted and Real Time Papers, kindly provided by CEPR, and VoxEU columns.  Our preliminary analysis suggests that although the relative number of female authors in non-pandemic related research has remained stable with respect to recent years (at around 20%), women constitute only 12% of the total number of authors working on COVID-19. Moreover, we see that it is primarily senior economists who are contributing to this new area. Mid-career and junior economists record the biggest gap between non-COVID and COVID research, and the gender differences are particularly stark at the mid-career level. Mid-career female economists have not yet started working on this new research area: only 12 mid-career female authors have contributed to COVID-19 related. research so far, out of a total of 647 distinct authors in our dataset of papers (NBER, CEPR, and CEPR Covid Economics).

• Website: CAPER Project

• Media Coverage:  VoxEU, Nature, El Mundo, Cambridge Centre for International Research podcast, Society Byte, Le Monde, Times Higher Education

Nutritional Inequality: The Role of Prices, Income, and Preferences

In the U.S., lower income households have a less healthy consumption basket than higher income ones. This paper studies the drivers of such nutrition inequality. I use longitudinal home-scanner data to estimate a demand system on food products, and measure the contribution of disposable income for food, prices and preferences to nutrition inequality. Disposable income and preferences have a predominant and quantitatively similar role in explaining consumption basket differences across income groups. Instead, prices have a limited effect. Further, I merge nutritional label information to assess, through a series of counterfactual exercises, the effect of income subsidies on nutrition quality. For example, I show that increasing the budget of a low-income household to the average level of the higher income households (a 45% increase) leads to an increase in protein consumption of approximately 5% and a decrease in sugar consumption of approximately 10%.

Book Chapters