Research

Abstract: We examine the impact of the global recession triggered by the Covid-19 pandemic on women’s versus men’s employment. Whereas recent recessions in advanced economies had a disproportionate impact on men’s employment, giving rise to the moniker “mancessions,” we show that the pandemic recession of 2020 was a “shecession” with larger employment declines among women in most countries. We examine the causes behind this pattern using micro data from several national labor force surveys, and show that both the composition of women’s employment across industries and occupations as well as increased childcare needs during closures of schools and daycare centers made important contributions. Gender gaps in the employment impact of the pandemic arise almost entirely among workers who are unable to work from home. Among telecommuters a different kind of gender gap arises: women working from home during the pandemic spent more work time also doing childcare and experienced greater productivity reductions than men. We identify two key challenges for future research. First, why is the pandemic gender gap pervasive, i.e., why did women experience larger employment reductions than men even after accounting for industry/occupation and childcare effects? Second, how will the pandemic shape gender equality in a post-pandemic labor market that will likely continue to be characterized by pervasive telecommuting? 

Abstract: This paper examines how the shift towards working from home during and after the Covid-19 pandemic shapes the way how labor market and locality choices interact. For our analysis, we combine large administrative data on employment biographies in Germany and a new working from home potential indicator based on comprehensive data on working conditions across occupations. We find that in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic, the distance between workplace and residence has increased more strongly for workers in occupations that can be done from home: The association of working from home potential and work-home distance increased significantly since 2021 as compared to a stable pattern before. The effect is much larger for new jobs, suggesting that people match to jobs with high working from home potential that are further away than before the pandemic. Most of this effect stems from jobs in big cities, which indicates that working from home alleviates constraints by tight housing markets. We find no significant evidence that commuting patterns changed more strongly for women than for men.

Abstract: Women strategically sort into "family-friendly" sectors characterized by lower returns to experience but also lower per-child penalties, before the birth of their first child. This pre-birth sorting represents an ex-ante career cost, a "sorting penalty" not captured by conventional measures. We build a heterogeneous agent model of career choice and fertility, incorporating both quality-quantity (Q-Q) and time-expenditure (T-E) trade-offs, to quantify this cost.  Our central finding is that despite this sorting penalty being surprisingly small, it reveals an important mechanism: Women at the productivity margin are the switchers and use the Q-Q and T-E trade-offs as their primary, more powerful tools to navigate motherhood and career. Our findings highlight that frameworks excluding these trade-offs will overestimate the fertility responses and career costs associated with policies.

Abstract: In recent decades, the correlation between U.S. men’s wages and hours worked has reversed: low-wage men used to work the longest hours, whereas today it is men with the highest wages who work the most. Similarly, low-wage households use to work many more hours than high-wage households, whereas today they work similar amounts. In this paper, we rationalize these trends in a model of joint household labor supply. The quantitative model shows that improvements in the employment status of women and expansions in the marketization of home production can account for most of the changes observed in the data. The model is consistent with the observation that the changing wage-hours correlation is driven by married men and matches time use data on the changes in home production and leisure that enable the shifts in labor supply. The results suggest that taking into account joint household decision making is essential for understanding the dynamics of labor supply.

Abstract: The past half century has witnessed widespread gender convergence across many labor market outcomes, including hours worked, earnings, and occupations. This paper shows that, over the same period, men's and women's sectors of employment actually diverged. It structurally decomposes the rise in sectoral segregation into three underlying drivers representing changes in preferences, discrimination, and technologies. Changes in the employment preferences of married women are the most important factor, explaining 59% of the rise in segregation. These changes in preferences also reduce the gender earnings gap because the non-wage amenities women value are increasingly prevalent in higher paying sectors.

We use the removal of public bank guarantees in Germany as a quasi-natural experiment to estimate the gender bargaining power gap. Using comprehensive wage data from the universe of banking employees, combined with bank-level financial information, we find that women have approximately two-thirds of the bargaining power of men. Our model-based analysis suggests that this gender bargaining gap alone accounts for 16 to 28% of the observed gender wage gap in the sector. These findings highlight an important driver of gender inequality: changes in firm profitability can reduce the gender wage gap, even without improvements in structural gender equality. This effect has significant implications for high-rent, high-inequality industries such as finance, where rent-sharing mechanisms favor male employees.

Abstract: In a number of European countries, unemployment rates for young college graduates are higher than for young high school graduates. This presents a challenge for canonical models of unemployment that suggest that unemployment should decrease with education. I offer a framework based on a search and matching model with productivity differences and the possibility of mismatch where relative efficiencies are estimated using the wage data and the structure of the model. My counterfactual analysis shows that the productivity channel is crucial in explaining relative unemployment rates whereas labor market frictions are crucial in estimating relative efficiencies. 

Abstract: This paper documents significant cross-country variation in the strength of the service sector pulling women into the market work. We find the composition of the service sector to be the crucial driver of this heterogeneity. Specifically, a larger public administration sector is associated with lower elasticity, while a higher female share within business services has a positive association. The relationship between female share within business services and elasticity also depends on the size of the food and accommodation services, reflecting a marketization channel. Service sector composition alone explains 54% of the cross-country variation, rising to 60% when controlling for labor market policies. These findings show that the sub-sectoral structure of the service sector is the critical determinant of its ability to pull women into market work.