This thesis consists of two papers in the field of labor economics.The first paper is titled ”The Distribution of Value of Time: An Analysis from Traffic Congestion and Express Lanes”. The value of time (VOT) determines the allocation of non-labor time to tasks and is crucial in travel demand and infrastructure, where congestion is a major source of loss. A large literature has estimated the mean VOT over a variety of subpopulations, but commuting choices and welfare effects of congestion policies depend on the individual VOT of the policy-relevant population. In this paper, I estimate the full VOT distribution for a population of drivers, using a rich new dataset in the unique context of highway Express Lanes (ELs), which offer time savings in exchange for a toll. A continuous function of traffic density sets the toll and rounds it to the nearest USD0.25, creating 32 separate discontinuities which provide identifying variation. The analysis is divided into three parts. First, using an RDD, I show that EL drivers have a mean VOT of USD66.56 per hour saved, substantially exceeding estimates from the literature. Second, the full VOT distribution for all drivers, which rationalizes EL aggregate traffic shares and RD results, shows wide heterogeneity: the median is USD17.42 per hour and the 95th percentile is USD166.05. Third, I build a structural model that endogenizes departure time (a key form of adjustment) to assess the welfare consequences of a range of counterfactual policies. I find that the EL is welfare-reducing because the value of the increase in travel times for non-users outweighs the benefits for users by USD25.68 per year, more than what half of drivers spend on the EL in a year.The second paper is titled ”The dynamics of the earnings gap between spouses in the United States and Europe”. When husbands in heterosexual couples prefer to be the primary earners, women’s outcomes both during and before marriage can be negatively affected. Some papers claimed that the distribution of the wife’s share of household earnings has missing mass to the right of 0.5 and attributed this regularity to a “male breadwinner” norm. If this norm exists, economic theory predicts that spouses would respond to violations of the norm ex-post, or prevent ex-ante violations. These responses do not emerge from the static distribution of the earnings gap between spouses, but from its dynamics. To test the theory, I provide the first dynamic analysis of the earnings gap, characterize its Markov transition matrix and the persistence of its shocks. The methodology is easily replicable, because it only requires a two-year panel of both spouses’ earnings. The gap converges to a stationary distribution that reproduces extremely well the static distribution of the wife’s share of earnings. Shocks to the earnings gap are more persistent when they are close to the quantile of the initial gap. Finally, the local transition of the earnings gap around 0 is driven by couples bunched exactly at 0 earnings gap. The behavior of spouses with similar earnings is not consistent with them holding a male breadwinner norm. When the wife earns slightly more than the husband, in the following period it is more likely that the husband earns more without any spouses’ response. All the results hold true across the US and 20 European countries.
