Search Results
Working Paper
The Evolution of Lifetime Hours and the Gender Wage Gap
The gender wage gap decreased (opened) from 1940 to 1975 and then increased (closed) until 2010. We use the model introduced in Ben-Porath (1967) to assess the role of gender differences in life cycle profiles of market time in explaining this dynamics. Men's profiles changed little across cohorts, but women's profiles converged to that of men implying, eventually, stronger incentives for women to accumulate human capital. We calibrate the model and find that (1) The 1940-75 decrease of the gap was because men valued human capital more than women due to their working more. The 1975-10 ...
Working Paper
Insurance and Inequality with Persistent Private Information
We study the implications of optimal insurance provision for long-run welfare and inequality in economies with persistent private information. A principal insures an agent whose private type follows an ergodic, finite-state Markov chain. The optimal contract always induces immiseration: the agent’s consumption and utility decrease without bound. Under positive serial correlation, it also backloads high-powered incentives: the sensitivity of the agent’s utility with respect to his reports increases without bound. These results extend—and help elucidate the limits of—the hallmark ...
Analyzing How Students Pick Which College to Attend
Research Officer Oksana Leukhina discusses her economic research on the college selection process.
Working Paper
Why did Rich Families Increase their Fertility? Inequality and Marketization of Child Care
A negative relationship between income and fertility has persisted for so long that its existence is often taken for granted. One economic theory builds on this relationship and argues that rising inequality leads to greater differential fertility between rich and poor. We show that the relationship between income and fertility has ?attened between 1980 and 2010 in the US, a time of increasing inequality, as high income families increased their fertility. These facts challenge the standard theory. We propose that marketization of parental time costs can explain the changing relationship ...
Working Paper
Lifetime Work Hours and the Evolution of the Gender Wage Gap
The gender wage gap expanded between 1940 and 1975 but narrowed sharply between 1980 and 1995. We use a human capital accumulation model introduced in Ben-Porath (1967) to assess the role of gender differences in life-cycle profiles of market time and occupation sorting in explaining the gender wage gap dynamics over the long run. Men’s aggregate hours profiles changed little across cohorts, but women’s profiles converged to those of men, and especially so in higher-paying occupations. We calibrate the model to wage data by age, year, gender and occupation, and find that changing time ...
Working Paper
Imperfect Information Transmission from Banks to Investors: Macroeconomic Implications
Our goal is to elucidate the interaction of banks' screening effort and strategic information production in loan-backed asset markets using a general equilibrium framework. Asset quality is unobserved by investors, but banks may purchase error-prone ratings. The premium paid on highly rated assets emerges as the main determinant of banks' screening effort. The fact that rating strategies reflect banks' private information about asset quality helps keep this premium high. Conventional regulatory policies interfere with this decision margin, thereby reducing signaling value of high ratings and ...
Women’s Evolving Careers Helped Shrink the Gender Pay Gap
The narrowing of the gender pay gap since the 1970s appears to be linked to women increasing their labor force attachment and shifting to higher-paying occupations.
Why AI Advancements May Push Some Workers Out of the Labor Force
A simple economic model provides a way to think about the potential effects of AI improvements in the long run. These possible effects include making some forms of labor obsolete.
Working Paper
Causes and Consequences of Student-College Mismatch
Our objective is to understand the observed patterns of student-college sorting and earnings premia associated with college quality in the United States. Higher quality colleges have higher graduation rates and their graduates earn more. Yet, a large fraction of high scoring students enroll in two-year schools and low quality four-year schools – this “undermatch” phenomenon is more pronounced for low income students. To understand these patterns, we develop a model with heterogeneous students and colleges that differ in human capital production technology and financial costs. We ...
Working Paper
Insurance and Inequality with Persistent Private Information
This paper studies the implications of optimal insurance provision for long-run welfare and inequality in economies with persistent private information. We consider a model in which a principal insures an agent whose privately observed endowment follows an ergodic, finite Markov chain. The optimal contract always induces immiseration: the agent’s consumption and utility decrease without bound. Under positive serial correlation, the optimal contract also features backloaded high-powered incentives: the sensitivity of the agent’s utility with respect to his report increases without bound. ...