Occupational segregation by gender is prevalent and can explain some of the gender wage gap. I empirically investigate a possible explanation for this segregation: the gender difference in preferences for competition, which in recent experimental studies has been found to affect economic...

Occupational segregation by gender is prevalent and can explain some of the gender wage gap. I empirically investigate a possible explanation for this segregation: the gender difference in preferences for competition, which in recent experimental studies has been found to affect economic...

This paper argues that the Oaxaca-Blinder decomposition incompletely decomposes the mean wage difference between two comparative groups into a portion that is explainable by differences in characteristics, and a portion that is attributable to differences in the valuation of these...

A model is presented where workers of differing abilities and from different social backgrounds are assigned to jobs based on grades received at school. It is examined how this matching is affected if good grades are granted to some low ability students. Such grade inflation is shown to reduce...

Racial inequality in economic outcomes, particularly among the college educated, persists throughout US society. Scholars debate whether this inequality stems from racial differences in human capital (e.g., college selectivity, GPA, college major) or employer discrimination against black job...

This paper investigates how exposure to higher-achieving male and female peers in university affects students’ major choices and labor market outcomes. For identification of causal effects, we exploit the random assignment of students to university sections in first-year compulsory courses. We...

Gender gaps in skills exist around the world but differ remarkably among the high and low-and-middle income countries. This paper uses a unique data set with more than 20,000 adolescents in rural India to examine whether socioeconomic status and gender attitudes predict gender gaps in cognitive...

Randomized field experiments designed to better understand the production of human capital have increased exponentially over the past several decades. This chapter summarizes what we have learned about various partial derivatives of the human capital production function, what important partial...

We develop novel measures of early-career skills that are more detailed, comprehensive, and labor-market-relevant than existing skill proxies. We exploit that skill requirements of apprenticeships in Germany are codified in state-approved, nationally standardized apprenticeship plans. These...