This paper shows that exposure to entrepreneurs during adolescence increases women's entry and performance in entrepreneurship and improves the allocation of talent in the economy. Using population-wide registry data from Denmark, we exploit idiosyncratic within-school, cross-cohort variation in...

We merge experimental data on competitiveness of a large sample of students with their complete educational history for up to ten years after the initial assessment. Exploiting quasi-random class assignments, we find that having competitive peers as classmates makes students choose and secure...

High-paying factory jobs in the 1940s were an engine of egalitarian economic growth for a generation. Are there alternate forms of work organization that deliver similar benefits for frontline workers? Work organization varies by type of complexity and degree of employer control. Technical and...

Despite numerous measures intended to enhance gender equality, gender-specific study and career choices remain a persistent concern for policymakers and academics globally. We contribute to the literature on gendered career choices by focusing on explicitly stated parental preferences for their...

Local teacher recruitment through "grow-your-own" programs is a prominent strategy to address workforce shortages and ensure that incoming teachers resemble, understand, and have strong connections to their communities. We exploit the staggered rollout of the Teacher Academy of Maryland career...

This paper studies the aggregate and distributional effects of raising the top marginal income tax rate in the presence of tax avoidance. To this end, we develop a quantitative macroeconomic model with heterogeneous agents and occupational choice in which entrepreneurs can avoid taxes in two...

While many employees risk losing their job and having their career disrupted due to employers' financial distress, it is widely recognized that many leave their employer in anticipation of layoff. In this paper, we assess how employee costs of financial distress depend on employees learning and...

We merge experimental data on competitiveness of a large sample of students with their complete educational history for up to ten years after the initial assessment. Exploiting quasi-random class assignments, we find that having competitive peers as classmates makes students choose and secure...

During the Second Industrial Revolution, in the late nineteenth century, the proliferation of automation technologies coincided with substantial job creation but also a "hollowing out" of middle-skilled job opportunities, which historically offered reliable paths to prosperity. We use recently...

Men and women consistently sort into different occupations and fields within occupations. In this paper, we use data on doctors in the English National Health Service, where women make up more than half of all senior pediatricians but only 1 in 8 senior surgeons and cardiologists. We estimate...

Worker sorting into tasks and occupations has long been recognized as an important feature of labor markets. But this sorting may be inefficient if jobseekers have inaccurate beliefs about their skills and therefore apply to jobs that do not match their skills. To test this idea, we measure...

The disparities in cross-country labor productivity are greater in agriculture than in other industries. I propose that the misallocation of female talent across sectors distorts productivity. I formalize the theory by using a general equilibrium Roy model with gender-specific frictions. If...

In this paper, we show the causal influence of the launch of generative AI in the form of ChatGPT on the search behavior of young people for apprenticeship vacancies. There is a strong and long-lasting decline in the intensity of searches for vacancies, which suggests great uncertainty among the...

In this paper, we show the causal influence of the launch of generative AI in the form of ChatGPT on the search behavior of young people for apprenticeship vacancies. There is a strong and long-lasting decline in the intensity of searches for vacancies, which suggests great uncertainty among the...

Poor countries have low wage employment and high self-employment. This paper shows that they also have high unemployment relative to wage employment, and that self-employment increases with this ratio. To understand the sources of these patterns, I build a search and matching model with choice...

This paper uses Census microdata linked with tax records to quantify the contribution of career choices - occupations and fields of study - to intergenerational income mobility. We document substantial segregation into occupations by parental income. Yet, the occupations children pursue explain...

Occupational segregation is one of the major causes of the gender pay gap. We probe the possibility that individual beliefs regarding gender stereotypes established in childhood contribute to gendered sorting. Using an experiment with two vignette designs, which was carried out in schools in the...

Career decisions, that is educational and occupational choice, are not only made by comparing expected incomes, but also by considering non-monetary rewards like social impact, chances of promotion, or the compatibility of work and family. In this paper, I use rich panel data from Germany to...

Career Explorer provides customized career exploration tools for workforce development staff and job seekers in Michigan. There are separate Career Explorer modules for mediated staff services and self-service by job seekers. The system was developed by the Michigan Center for Data and Analytics...

This paper shows that exposure to entrepreneurs during adolescence increases women's entry and performance in entrepreneurship and improves the allocation of talent in the economy. Using population-wide registry data from Denmark, we exploit idiosyncratic within-school, cross-cohort variation in...

How do students’ earnings expectations differ by being the first in their family to attend university (FiF) and how do they affect field of study choice? We leverage unique survey and administrative data from a German university to document sizable gaps in expected earnings between FiF and...

How do students' earnings expectations differ by being the first in their family to attend university (FiF) and how do they affect field of study choice? We leverage unique survey and administrative data to document sizable gaps in expected earnings between FiF and non-FiF students. Our data can...

How do students' earnings expectations differ by being the first in their family to attend university (FiF) and how do they affect field of study choice? We leverage unique survey and administrative data from a German university to document sizable gaps in expected earnings between FiF and...

In many countries, subsidies towards higher education and financial aid to students from poorer backgrounds have reduced socio-economic status (SES) gaps in undergraduate study. The increasing importance of graduate studies that are typically more expensive may, however, provide a new avenue for...

Competitive environments often leave room for "dirty" practices such as sabotage, retaliation, or dishonesty. We use an online experiment to document aggregate levels and individual differences in the willingness to engage in dirty competition and in the willingness to enter competitions where...

The demand for information technology professionals in the United States is increasing while the number of available graduates is declining. Therefore, it is necessary to develop and refine strategies at all education levels and in business organizations to implement innovative approaches. These...

Children tend to choose the same occupations as their parents. We examine the implications of this tendency for talent allocation and intergenerational mobility. Using Swedish data on skills and personality traits, we estimate a general equilibrium Roy model with unequal occupational access...

Are workers with poor outside opportunities less responsive and more susceptible to negative demand shifts in routine occupations? To answer this, I create and estimate an occupation specialization index (OSI) using Swedish register data and machine learning tools. It measures the expected...

This paper presents an empirical exploration of the geography of adolescents' occupational choices, using data covering a single cross-section of the population of all individual-level apprenticeship contracts in the canton of Bern in Switzerland. The unique feature of the data is that they...

We study how two distinct dimensions of peer ethnic diversity (ethnic fractionalization and ethnic polarization) affect occupational choice. Using longitudinal administrative data and leveraging variation in ethnic composition across cohorts within schools, we find evidence for two opposing...

We consider a private sector job that offers high-powered incentives and two public sector jobs that produce an identical public good, but only one of them offers opportunities for corruption. Our theoretical predictions relate occupation and effort choices, in these three jobs, to preferences...