Working papers

Working papers

We study how job seekers' understanding of complex unemployment benefit rules affects their labor market performance. Based on a large-scale scale field experiment, an online survey, and detailed administrative records, we document three main results. First, job seekers exhibit pronounced gaps in understanding their personal benefit entitlements and the prevailing rules that govern these entitlements. Second, a low-cost information strategy using a personalized online tool increases job seekers' understanding. Third, the labor-market effects of the intervention depend on the timing of the treatment. Among job seekers at the beginning of the unemployment spell, we observe no systematic treatment differences in labor market outcomes. For individuals that are closer to benefit expiration, the intervention promotes employment in part-time and non-regular jobs, but reduces overall employment and earnings in the long run. (R&R at JEEA)

Matching the Danish Longitudinal Survey of Youth with rich administrative records, we investigate the direct link between women's desired family size and their long-term career outcomes, while controlling for time preferences, cognitive ability, aspirations, and detailed socio-demographics in adolescence. We find that desiring a large family of at least three children is associated with annual wage losses over career equivalent to 8% of sample mean relative to desiring a small family of two children or less. Surprisingly, neither motherhood nor number of children drive this result. Despite a signicant correlation between family desires and realized family formation, the key mechanism driving wage losses over career are greater adjustments of labor market behavior in response to childbirth, particularly through selection into part-time and  flexible employment, among women desiring a large family. Earnings from self-employment moderate wage losses associated with desiring a large family. Subgroup analyses indicate that wage losses associated with desired family size increase in patience, cognitive ability and educational aspirations. Hence, women with a higher earnings potential pay a higher price for desiring a large family. 

4.  Publish or Procreate: The Effects of Motherhood on Academic Performance w/ Valentina Tartari

Women are underrepresented in science and representation deficits are even greater for more senior positions and in STEM fields. The dominant explanation is that male and female scientists, even within the same field, publish at unequal rates. Prior studies on select fields suggest that the gender gap in academic productivity reflects differential effects of childbearing on men and women, as women face tensions between the two greedy institutions of family and academia. We study the full population of STEM researchers in Denmark and investigate parenthood penalties on scientific productivity of mothers and fathers, who are active in research after the birth of their first child. We employ an event-study approach on annual research publications, an outcome especially relevant in the science domain, and rely on a unique combination of Danish registers and granular bibliometric data on publications from the database Scopus. We find that, on average, the first childbirth results in an annual penalty of 25 percent on scientific productivity of mothers in STEM fields relative to fathers in the first 5 years after birth. This reflects a drop in annual research publications of mothers relative to their own pre-birth productivity. Hence, unequal impacts of parenthood may be an important driver of gender inequality in Science.