Institute for the Study of Labor

About: Institute for the Study of Labor is a nonprofit organization based out in Bonn, Germany. It is known for research contribution in the topics: Wage & Unemployment. The organization has 2039 authors who have published 13475 publications receiving 439376 citations.

The Evolution of Gender Gaps in Industrialized Countries

Abstract: 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 trends in female employment, working hours, and relative wages for a wide cross section of developed economies. It reviews existing work on the factors driving gender convergence, and novel perspectives on remaining gender gaps. Finally, the article emphasizes the interplay between gender trends and the evolution of the industry structure. Based on a shift-share decomposition, it shows that the growth in the service share can explain at least half of the overall variation in female hours, both over time and across countries.

Do Divorcing Couples Become Happier By Breaking Up

Abstract: Divorce is a leap in the dark. This paper investigates whether people who split up actually become happier. Using the British Household Panel Survey, we are able to observe an individual's level of psychological wellbeing in the years before and after divorce. Our results show that divorcing couples reap psychological gains from the dissolution of their marriages. Men and women benefit equally. The paper also studies the effects of bereavement, of having dependent children, and of remarriage. We measure wellbeing using GHQ and life-satisfaction scores.

Family Background, Self-Confidence and Economic Outcomes

Abstract: In this paper we analyze the role played by self-confidence, modeled as beliefs about one’s ability, in shaping task choices. We propose a model in which fully rational agents exploit all the available information to update their beliefs using Bayes’ rule, eventually learning their true type. We show that when the learning process does not converge quickly to the true ability level, small differences in initial confidence can result in diverging patterns of human capital accumulation between otherwise identical individuals. If differences in self-confidence are correlated with socio-economic background (as a large body of empirical literature suggests), self-confidence can be a channel through which education and earning inequalities perpetuate across generations. Our theory suggests that cognitive tests should take place as early as possible, in order to avoid that systematic differences in self-confidence among equally talented people lead to the emergence of gaps in the accumulation of human capital.

Noncognative Skills, Occupational Attainment, and Relative Wages

Abstract: This paper examines whether men's and women's noncognitive skills influence their occupational attainment and, if so, whether this contributes to the disparity in their relative wages. We find that noncognitive skills have a substantial effect on the probability of employment in many, though not all, occupations in ways that differ by gender. Consequently, men and women with similar noncognitive skills enter occupations at very different rates. Women, however, have lower wages on average not because they work in different occupations than men do, but rather because they earn less than their male colleagues employed in the same occupation. On balance, women's noncognitive skills give them a slight wage advantage. Finally, we find that accounting for the endogeneity of occupational attainment more than halves the proportion of the overall gender wage gap that is unexplained.

Capital accumulation and growth: a new look at the empirical evidence

Abstract: Using annual data for 75 countries in the period 1960–2000, we present evidence of a positive relationship between investment as a share of gross domestic product (GDP) and the long-run growth rate of GDP per worker. This result is robust for our full sample and for the subsample of non-OECD countries, but not for the subsample of OECD countries. Our analysis controls for time-invariant country-specific heterogeneity in growth rates, and for a range of time-varying control variables. We also address endogeneity issues, and allow for heterogeneity across countries in model parameters and for cross-section dependence.