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.
This version subsumes "Human Capital Accumulation, Equilibrium Wage-Setting, and the Life-Cycle Gender Pay Gap", which was circulated via Cambridge Working Papers in Economics (No. 2010).
with Yinon Bar-On, Ofer Cornfeld, Ron Milo and Eran Yashiv
This paper aims to place the Economics modelling of COVID19 and possible future pandemics on the foundations of a sound analysis of epidemiological dynamics. We point out the errors in prevalent modelling and propose a constructive alternative. The models are compared in terms of the speed of the disease and their empirical fit.
Using a social planner problem, embedded with the economic effects of the pandemic and the roles of individual behavior and policy intervention, we demonstrate the substantial policy implications at stake. A widelyused model erroneously characterizes a relatively slow-moving disease and engenders dramatically higher death tolls relative to the correct benchmark.
with Yinon Bar-On, Ofer Cornfeld, and Eran Yashiv
We present normative and positive analyses of novel epidemic-related NPI tools. Rather than use prevalent population restrictions, they are based on time restrictions. The analysis relates to the timescales of virus transmission. Key findings are that the new tools significantly improve social welfare, substantially lessening the trade-offs involved; optimally-derived timings of interventions suppress the disease, while maintaining reasonable economic activity; and outcomes are superior to actual experience of New York State and Florida over the course of 2020. With the advent of SARS-COV-2 variants and with possible future pandemics, this modelling is likely to remain highly relevant in economic research.
הדינמיקה של מגפת 19 COVID בישראל והשלכותיה הכלכליות ( עם ערן ישיב ועופר קורנפלד) נייר דיון מס' 2020-1 של מכון פורדר
with Analia Schlosser and Elad Demalach
Whether universal preschool provision improves children’s outcomes and through what mechanisms is a very important, but still an open question. To identify the causal effect of public preschool provision, we analyze the implementation of the Preschool Law mandating the provision of public preschool for ages 3 and 4 in year 2000 in Israel. In our quasi-experimental research design, the identification relies on the exogenous variation in public preschool availability across towns due to the limited implementation of the Law. We focus on the Arab population, who were the main beneficiaries of the first phase of the Law implementation, and follow children over time to examine a wide range of outcomes. We apply a difference-in-differences strategy and compare between cohorts of children who lived in the covered towns before and after the implementation of the Law relative to equivalent cohorts who lived in towns that did not have access to universal preschool education.
We find that children from treated localities benefitted from the Preschool Law in many ways: their academic performance in primary and secondary school improved significantly and their post-secondary enrollment rates increased relative to the children from the comparison localities. We also find beneficial effects of universal preschool provision on additional important outcomes, such as a reduction in crime rates among boys and a decline in rates of early marriage among girls.
This paper examines the role of job search and human capital dynamics in life-cycle wage growth. It proposes a tractable stationary model of individual career dynamics with rich life-cycle properties that incorporates on the job search, learning by doing at work and loss of skills in unemployment. Workers move through their careers, and firms post wage offers that are tailored to different career stages. The endogenous range of equilibrium offers is broad at the start of the career, contracts in mid-career, and shifts downward toward the career’s end. The calibrated model predicts that search accounts for almost 60 percent of the observed wage growth among high-school graduates in the U.S. during the first decade of a career and subsequently declines; it can even become a negative factor for college graduates when they age. The paper highlights the important role that wage offer distributions play in wage growth analysis.
Arefyev, N. and Baron, T., 2019. Capital Taxation and Rent Seeking. Revue d'économie politique, 129(5), pp.815-832.
"Labor Relations in a MENA Region: More Integration towards a Brighter Future," with Eran Yashiv, in “The Arab Peace Initiative and Israeli-Palestinian Peace: the Political Economy of a New Period,” by AIX Group, 2002