Results

Blog

VoxEU:

Work, care, and gender across UK lockdowns

A growing body of research is making clear the unequal impact of the COVID-19 pandemic across gender. This column explores what the likely implications of a second lockdown in the UK are for gender equality at work and i...Read more...

Blog

LSE British Politics and Policy:

How lockdowns have reversed traditional gender roles in some UK households and further entrenched them in others

Claudia Hupkau and Barbara Petrongolo discuss what the likely implications of a second lockdown are for gender equality at work and in the home....Read more...

CVER Research Paper

Gender, achievement, and subject choice in English education

In common with other OECD countries, there is a gender gap in educational achievement in England favouring girls. This carries through to tertiary education. On the other hand, boys are far more likely to engage in STEM ...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Work, care and gender during the Covid-19 crisis

We explore impacts of the pandemic crisis and associated restrictions to economic activity on paid and unpaid work for men and women in the UK. Using data from the Covid-19 supplement of Understanding Society, we find ev...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Gender differences in tertiary education: what explains STEM participation?

The share of women achieving tertiary education has increased rapidly over time and now exceeds that of men in most OECD countries. However, women are severely under-represented in maths-intensive science fields, which a...Read more...

CentrePiece article

Covid-19 and the work patterns of men and women

Claudia Hupkau and Barbara Petrongolo explore the impact of the pandemic on women's labour market prospects and ‘home production' responsibilities...Read more...

CEP Covid-19 analysis

Work, care and gender during the Covid-19 crisis

The Covid-19 crisis has especially hit service sectors with frequent social interactions, in which women are over-represented. At the same time, if not directly subject to the lock-down, women are more likely to hold job...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

A survey of gender gaps through the lens of the industry structure and local labor markets

In this paper we discuss some strands of the recent literature on the evolution of gender gaps and their driving forces. We will revisit key stylized facts about gender gaps in employment and wages in a few high-income c...Read more...

Blog

VoxEU:

COVID-19 and gender gaps: Latest evidence and lessons from the UK

The social distancing and lockdowns associated with the COVID-19 crisis has hit service sectors with frequent interactions between consumers and providers which cannot be done from home. At the same time, it has added ed...Read more...

Blog

LSE British Politics and Policy:

COVID-19 and wages: prepare for large cuts if you are younger and work in a small firm

Brian Bell, Nick Bloom, Jack Blundell, and Luigi Pistaferri estimate how the ongoing pandemic may impact earnings by age group, gender, and firm size. The data suggests that young men working in small firms could see ear...Read more...

Blog

VoxEU:

Prepare for large wage cuts if you are younger and work in a small firm

The COVID-19 pandemic is turning into a global recession - probably the biggest drop in economic activity since the Great Depression of the 1930s. This column uses over 3 million earnings observations drawn from more tha...Read more...

Journal article

Oxford Bulletin of Economics and Statistics:

Do apprenticeships pay? Evidence for England

The importance of apprenticeships for early labour market transitions varies across countries and over time. In recent times, there has been a policy drive to increase the number of people undertaking apprenticeships in ...Read more...

CVER Research Paper

Gender and Socio-Economic Differences in STEM Uptake and Attainment

The underrepresentation of women in Science, Technology, Engineering and Maths (STEM) occupations is a world-wide phenomenon and a concern for policy makers. This is the case in the UK where a shortage of STEM skills is ...Read more...

Blog

LSE News:

Artificial intelligence could help protect victims of domestic violence

Ria Ivandic finds in the United States, roughly one in four women experience serious intimate partner violence over their lifetimes...Read more...

CentrePiece article

The gig economy and workers' preferences for steady jobs

Is the rise of gig work, freelancing, zero hours contracts and self-employment a result of people wanting such work or because they have no other choice? Nikhil Datta finds that while workers in the gig economy may like ...Read more...

Blog

LSE Business Review:

Can economic incentives promote a more equal gender division of house chores?

Gender identity norms such as the male bread-winner model are possible drivers of persistent gender inequalities in the labour market. However, the extent to which they restrict the behaviour of couples is debated. While...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Willing to pay for security: a discrete choice experiment to analyse labour supply preferences

This paper investigates the extent to which labour supply preferences are responsible for the marked rise in atypical work arrangements in the UK and US. By employing vignettes in a discrete job choice experiment in a re...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Economic incentives, home production and gender identity norms

We infer the role of gender identity norms from the reallocation of childcare across parents, following changes in their relative wages. By exploiting variation from a Swedish tax reform, we estimate the elasticity of su...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

The not-so-generalized effects of the generalized system of preferences

We use an empirical gravity equation approach to study how nonreciprocal trade preferences (NRTPs), enacted mainly through the Generalized System of Preferences, affect the exports of the beneficiary nations. In line wit...Read more...

CentrePiece article

Economic consequences of family policies

There is no compelling evidence that extended parental leave rights have a positive impact on female employment, according to research by Claudia Olivetti and Barbara Petrongolo, which analyses the labour market effects ...Read more...

Journal article

AEA Papers and Proceedings:

Gender Norms and Relative Working Hours: Why Do Women Suffer More Than Men from Working Longer Hours Than Their Partners?

Constraints that prevent women from working longer hours are argued to be important drivers of the gender wage gap in the United States. We provide evidence that in couples where the wife's working hours exceed the husba...Read more...

Journal article

Scandinavian Journal of Economics:

Gender and Promotions: Evidence from Academic Economists in France

Differences in promotion across genders are still prevalent in many occupations. Recent work based on experimental evidence indicates that women participate less in or exert lower effort during contests. We exploit the u...Read more...

Journal article

Journal of International Economics:

Working across time zones: Exporters and the gender wage gap

This study argues that there is a systematic difference in the gender wage gap (GWG) between exporting firms and non-exporters. Exporters may require greater commitment from their employees, such as working particular ho...Read more...

Journal article

Regional Science and Urban Economics:

You've come a long way, baby. Husbands’ commuting time and family labour supply

This paper explores the effects of husbands’ commuting time on wives’ employment and family time allocation. We develop a unitary family model, and we show that when market services are imperfect substitutes of home prod...Read more...

Journal article

Journal of Economic Perspectives:

The economic consequences of family policies: lessons from a century of legislation in high-income countries

By the early 21st century, most high-income countries have put into effect a host of generous and virtually gender-neutral parental leave policies and family benefits, with the multiple goals of gender equity, higher fer...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Gender and promotions: evidence from academic economists in France

The promotion system for French academic economists provides an interesting environment to examine the promotion gap between men and women. Promotions occur through national competitions for which we have information bot...Read more...

CentrePiece article

In brief ... How the rise of the service economy narrowed the gender gap

The historical growth in the service sector since the Second World War has created jobs for which women have a comparative advantage, according to analysis by Rachel Ngai and Barbara Petrongolo. Their research shows how ...Read more...

Journal article

Journal of Political Economy:

Gender gaps in performance: Evidence from young lawyers

This paper documents the gender gap in performance among highskilled professionals in the United States. On the basis of widely used performance measures in law firms, we find that male lawyers bill 10 percent more hours...Read more...

Journal article

American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics:

Gender gaps and the rise of the service economy

This paper investigates the role of the rise in services in the narrowing of gender gaps in hours and wages in recent decades. We highlight the between-industry component of differential gender trends for the United Stat...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

What’s in a name? Expectations, heuristics and choice during a period of radical school reform

Education policy worldwide has sought to incentivize school improvement and facilitate pupil-school matching by introducing reforms that promote autonomy and choice. Understanding the way in which families form preferenc...Read more...

CentrePiece article

Superstar houses and the American mortgage frenzy

Clement Bellet shows how visible wealth inequality fuelled the US mortgage boom that preceded the financial crisis....Read more...

CEP discussion paper

The economic consequences of family policies: lessons from a century of legislation in high-income countries

We draw lessons from existing work and our own analysis on the effects of parental leave and other interventions aimed at aiding families. The outcomes of interest are female employment, gender gaps in earnings and ferti...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

The paradox of the Joneses: superstar houses and mortgage frenzy in suburban America

Despite a major upscaling of suburban houses over the last decades, house satisfaction has remained steady in the United States. I show that upward comparison in size can explain this paradox, as top housing size mirrore...Read more...

Journal article

Annual Review of Economics:

The evolution of gender gaps in industrialized countries

Women in developed economies have made major advancements in labor markets throughout the past century, but remaining gender differences in pay and employment seem remarkably persistent. This article documents long-run t...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Does Rosie like riveting? Male and female occupational choices

Occupational segregation and pay gaps by gender remain large while many of the constraints traditionally believed to be responsible for these gaps have weakened over time. Here, we explore the possibility that women and ...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Where does the wind blow? Green preferences and spatial misallocation in renewable energy sector

Are "greener" investments less efficient? This paper looks at the location choices by wind power investors. I measures the efficiency loss in this sector due to wrong project location and explore the factors contributing...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Special and differential treatment for developing countries

Special and Differential Treatment for Developing Countries (SDT) constitutes a central feature of the GATT/WTO system. Its formal goal is to foster export-led growth in developing countries. Its theoretical foundations ...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

The evolution of gender gaps in industrialized countries

Women in developed economies have made major inroads in labor markets throughout the past century, but remaining gender differences in pay and employment seem remarkably persistent. This paper documents long-run trends i...Read more...

CentrePiece article

In brief...Under pressure: gender differences in responding to exam stakes

Do girls and boys respond differently to exam pressure, perhaps depending on the subject and whether or not the tests are 'high stakes'? Ghazala Azmat and colleagues consider evidence for secondary school age children ...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Would you choose to be happy? Tradeoffs between happiness and the other dimensions of life in a large population survey

A large literature documents the correlates and causes of subjective well-being, or happiness. But few studies have investigated whether people choose happiness. Is happiness all that people want from life, or are they w...Read more...

CentrePiece article

In brief... Oil: the impact on women's work

Stephan Maurer and Andrei Potlogea explore whether oil-dominated economies are naturally biased against women's labour market participation....Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Globalization: a woman's best friend? Exporters and the gender wage gap

While the impact of globalization on income inequality has received a lot of attention, little is known about its effect on the gender wage gap (GWG). This study argues that there is a systematic difference in the GWG be...Read more...

CEP election analysis

#ElectionEconomics: The Research Evidence on Key Issues for Voters in the 2015 UK General Election

Please see the CEP #ElectionEconomics report(Paper 1)and the Executive Summary (Paper 2) that cover all the election 2015 briefings, discussing the research evidence on 15 of the UK's key policy battlegrounds: immigratio...Read more...

CEP election analysis

Gender Gaps in the UK Labour Market: jobs, pay and family-friendly policies

Differences in the labour market experiences of men and women have fallen over the last 20 years, but there are still sizeable ‘gender gaps’ in employment and wages. Certain factors help to explain a good part of gender ...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Giving a little help to girls? Evidence on grade discrimination and its effect on students' achievement

This paper tests if gender-discrimination in grading affects pupils' achievements and course choices. I use a unique dataset containing grades given by teachers, scores obtained anonymously by pupils at different ages, a...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Gender Differences in Response to Big Stakes

It is commonly perceived that increasing incentives improves performance. However, the reaction to increased incentives might differ between men and women, leading to gender differences in performance. In a natural exper...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Do Women Earn Less Even as Social Entrepreneurs?

Based upon unique survey data collected using respondent driven sampling methods, we investigate whether there is a gender pay gap among social entrepreneurs in the UK. We find that women as social entrepreneurs earn 29%...Read more...

Journal article

Labour Economics:

Gender and the labor market: What have we learned from field and lab experiments?

We discuss the contribution of the experimental literature to the understanding of both traditional and previously unexplored dimensions of gender differences and discuss their bearings on labor market outcomes. Experime...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Fueling the Gender Gap? Oil and Women's Labor and Marriage Market Outcomes

This paper analyzes the effect of resource-based economic specialization on women's labor market outcomes. Using information on the location and discovery of major oil fields in the Southern United States coupled with a ...Read more...

CentrePiece article

Gender and the labour market: evidence from experiments

Lab experiments are an increasingly valuable tool for understanding differences in how men and women are treated in the labour market. Dr Ghazala Azmat and Professor Barbara Petrongolo explore what has been learned about...Read more...

CEP occasional paper

Gender and the Labor Market: What Have We Learned from Field and Lab Experiments?

We discuss the contribution of the experimental literature to the understanding of both traditional and previously unexplored dimensions of gender differences and discuss their bearings on labor market outcomes. Experime...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Looking Ahead: Subjective Time Perception and Individual Time Discounting

Time discounting is at the heart of economic decision-making. We disentangle hyperbolic discounting from subjective time perception using experimental data from incentive-compatible tests to measure time preferences, and...Read more...

SERC/Urban and Spatial Programme Discussion Paper

Gender and Competition: Evidence from Academic Promotions in France

Differences in promotion across genders are still prevalent in many occupations. Recent work based on experimental evidence indicates that women participate less in or exert lower effort during contests. We exploit the u...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Explaining cross-racial differences in the educational gender gap

The sizable gender gap in college enrolment, especially among African Americans, constitutes a puzzling empirical regularity that may have serious consequences on marriage markets, male labor force participation and the ...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Estimating Bayesian Decision Problems with Heterogeneous Priors

In many areas of economics there is a growing interest in how expertise and preferences drive individual and group decision making under uncertainty. Increasingly, we wish to estimate such models to quantify which of the...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Gender Gaps and the Rise of the Service Economy

This paper explains the narrowing of gender gaps in wages and market hours in recent decades by the growth of the service economy. We propose a model with three sectors: goods, services and home production. Women have a ...Read more...

SERC/Urban and Spatial Programme Discussion Paper

Top Team Demographics, Innovation and Business Performance: Findings from English Firms and Cities 2008-9

High levels of net migration to the UK have contributed to growing cultural diversity, and researchers are turning their attention to the long-term effects of diversity on productivity. Yet little is known about these is...Read more...

CentrePiece article

Science: why the gender gap?

Stereotypes, role models played by teachers and social norms influence girls’ academic self-concept and push girls to choose humanities rather than science. Do recruiters reinforce this strong selection by discriminating...Read more...

CentrePiece article

Sexism at work

Women have, on average, been less well-paid than men throughout history. Prior to 1900, most economic historians see the gender wage gap as a reflection of men’s greater strength and correspondingly higher productivity. ...Read more...

CentrePiece article

Gender gaps in performance

Ghazala Azmat and Rosa Ferrer analyse data on young lawyers to understand what drives differences in earnings between highly skilled men and women....Read more...

CEE/Education and skills discussion paper

Do Professors Really Perpetuate the Gender Gap in Science? Evidence from a Natural Experiment in a French Higher Education Institution

Stereotypes, role models played by teachers and social norms influence girls’ academic self-concept and push girls to choose humanities rather than science. Do recruiters reinforce this strong selection by discriminating...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Gender Gaps in Performance: Evidence from Young Lawyers

This paper documents and studies the gender gap in performance among associate lawyers in the United States. Unlike other high-skilled professions, the legal profession assesses performance using transparent measures tha...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Gender Gaps Across Countries and Skills: Supply, Demand and the Industry Structure

The gender wage gap varies widely across countries and across skill groups within countries. Interestingly, there is a positive cross-country correlation between the unskilled- to-skilled gender wage gap and the correspo...Read more...

SERC/Urban and Spatial Programme Discussion Paper

Whether to Hire Local Contract Teachers? Trade-off Between Skills and Preferences in India

Whether to hire teachers locally on a contract basis, or via competitive examinations as government officials, is a major policy question in developing countries. We use a Discrete Choice Experiment to assess the job pre...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Gender, Productivity and the Nature of Work and Pay: Evidence from the Late Nineteenth-Century Tobacco Industry

Women have, on average, been less well-paid than men throughout history. Prior to 1900, most economic historians see the gender wage gap as a reflection of men’s greater strength and correspondingly higher productivity. ...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Priors and Desires

This paper offers a simple but powerful model of wishful thinking, cognitive dissonance, and related biases. Choices maximize subjective expected utility, but beliefs depend on the decision maker's interests as well as o...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

The Importance of Relative Performance Feedback Information: Evidence from a Natural Experiment using High School Students

We study the effect of providing relative performance feedback information on performance under piece-rate incentives. A natural experiment that took place in a high school offers an unusual opportunity to test this effe...Read more...

CEE/Education and skills discussion paper

Assessed by a Teacher Like Me: Race, Gender and Subjective Evaluations

The underrepresentation of minority teachers and male teachers remains an issue in US elementary education, and there is evidence that racial interactions partly shape student performance. However there is little work on...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Understanding the Gender Pay Gap: What's Competition Got to Do with It?

A number of papers have recently argued that men and women have different attitudes and behavioural responses to competition. Laboratory experiments suggest that these gender differences are very large but it is importan...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Comparing Willingness-to-Pay and Subjective Well-Being in the Context of Non-Market Goods

In order to value non-market goods, economists estimate individuals’ willingness to pay (WTP) for these goods using revealed or stated preference methods. We compare these conventional approaches with subjective well-bei...Read more...

Journal article

Journal of Public Economics:

The marginal utility of income

In normative public economics it is crucial to know how fast the marginal utility of income declines as income increases. One needs this parameter for cost-benefit analysis, for optimal taxation and for the (Atkinson) me...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Respect

Becker (1974) introduced to modern economics the idea that others care about what others think about them and derived many useful insights from this assumption. But he did not provide a very complete description of the g...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

The Marginal Utility of Income

In normative public economics it is crucial to know how fast the marginal utility of income declines as income increases. One needs this parameter for cost-benefit analysis, for optimal taxation and for the (Atkinson) me...Read more...

CEE/Education and skills discussion paper

Education, Occupation and Career Expectations: Determinants of the Gender Pay Gap for UK Graduates

A large proportion of the gender wage gap is usually left unexplained. In this paper, we investigate whether the unexplained component is due to misspecification. Using a sample of recent UK graduates, we introduce varia...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

The Early Career Gender Wage Gap

In Finland the gender wage gap increases significantly during the first 10 years after labor market entry accounting most of the life-time increase in the gender wage gap. This paper focuses on the early career gender wa...Read more...

CEE/Education and skills discussion paper

Gender and Student Achievement in English Schools

The widening gap between the average educational achievement of boys and girls has been the subject of much discussion. This gap is especially controversial for students taking national exams at the end of their compulso...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Unequal Pay or Unequal employment? A Cross-Country Analysis of Gender Gaps

There is evidence of a negative cross-country correlation between gender wage and employment gaps. We argue that non-random selection of women into work explains an important part of such correlation and thus of the obse...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

The Gender Gap in Early Career Wage Growth

In the UK the gender pay gap on entry to the labour market is approximately zero but after ten years after labour market entry, there is a gender wage gap of almost 25 log points. This paper explores the reason for this ...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Gender Segregation in Employment Contracts

This paper presents evidence on gender segregation in employment contracts in 15 EU countries, using micro data from the ECHPS. Women are over-represented in part-time jobs in all countries considered, but while in north...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Gender Gaps in Unemployment Rates in OECD Countries

There is an enormous literature on gender gaps in pay and labour market participation but virtually no literature on gender gaps in unemployment rates. Although there are some countries in which there is essentially no g...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Youth-Adult Differences in the Demand for Unionisation: Are American, British, and Canadian Workers All That Different?

This paper examines demand for union membership amongst young workers in Britain, Canada and the United States. The paper benchmarks youth demands for collective representation against those of adult workers and finds th...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Gender, Motivation, Experience and Wages

Using data from the British Household Panel Survey, 1991-97 this paper investigates the structure of the female wage equation and the gender wage differential. The discriminatory portion of the gender wage differential i...Read more...