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...

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...

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...

In this paper, I propose a life cycle model of occupational choice with endogenous health behavior, aging, and longevity. Health-demanding work leads to a faster accumulation of health deficits and is remunerated with a hazard markup on wages. Health deficit accumulation is also influenced by...

We estimate the effects of unobserved skills on labor market outcomes by investigating a change in the distribution of unobserved skills. Among people with the same levels of observed skills such as education and work experience, there are still disparities in labor market outcomes. since...

Anti-scientific attitudes can impose substantial costs on societies. Can schools be an important agent in mitigating the propagation of such attitudes? This paper investigates the effect of the content of science education on anti-scientific attitudes, knowledge, and choices. The analysis...

This paper studies potentially relevant factors affecting changes in the number of self-employed in Korea during the period of 1986-2018. The number of self-employed had increased steadily until 2002 but started to decrease around that time and had continued to decline. The increasing trend in...

We analyze the relationship between social gender norms and adolescents' occupational choices by combining regional votes on constitutional amendments on gender equality with job application data from a large job board for apprenticeships. Results show that adolescent males in regions with...

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...

Benjamin W. Arold prepared this study while he was working at the Center for Economics of Education at the ifo Institute. The study was completed in March 2022 and accepted as doctoral thesis by the Department of Economics at the LMU Munich. It consists of four distinct empirical essays that...

CEOs of large firms filing for bankruptcy are more likely to exit the executive labor market after bankruptcy and experience substantial compensation losses (Eckbo et al., 2016). While the fear of reputational scarring can lead to lower risk-taking and manifest itself as lower rates of...

Does identity influence economic behavior in the labor market? I investigate this question in rural India, focusing on the effect of caste identity on job-specific labor supply. In a field experiment, laborers choose whether to take up various job offers, which differ in associations with...

This paper examines the importance of gender differences in labour supply and demand for job exibility to the growth of the gender wage gap over the life cycle and over time for graduates in the UK. We document that the graduate gender wage gap increases over the life cycle, especially between...

The COVID‐19 pandemic has led to temporary suspensions of many occupational licensing laws, especially for health care professionals, in an effort to manage surges in health care demand. The crisis highlights more general concerns about occupational licensing laws, yet convincing empirical...

Using a representative survey combined with register data on long-term labour market outcomes, this paper examines how personality traits predict sorting into public and private sector employment among prime working-age individuals. To gain deeper insights into the dynamic dimensions of the...

I examine how one central aspect of the family environment - sibling sex composition - affects women's gender conformity. Using Danish administrative data, I causally estimate the effect of having a second-born brother relative to a sister for first-born women. I show that women with a brother...

Automation affects workers because it affects the return to their skills when performing different tasks. I propose a general equilibrium model of occupational choice and technological change which takes two important labor market features into account: (i) automation happens to tasks and (ii)...

Using new data on teachers' intentions to leave the profession, subjective expectations about labour market outcomes and a modified discrete-choice experiment we find that i) teachers are systematically misinformed about population earnings, and misinformation is correlated with attrition...

I investigate the mechanisms that drive sorting into entrepreneurship and entrepreneurial success among young individuals. I use Canadian matched owner-employeremployee data to conduct my investigation. Empirically, older entrepreneurs and entrepreneurs who have previously worked in high-wage...

Using new data on teachers’ intentions to leave the profession, subjective expectations about labour market outcomes and a modified discrete-choice experiment we find that i) teachers are systematically misinformed about population earnings, and misinformation is correlated with attrition...

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...

Many observers argue that diversity in Economics and STEM fields is critical, not simply because of egalitarian goals, but because who is in a field may shape what is studied by it. If increasing the rate of majoring in mathematically-intensive fields among women is a worthy goal, then...

This paper evaluates the impact of "Coding Girls", an educational enrichment program designed to address the underrepresentation of women and girls in the fields of science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) in Italy by stimulating young female students' interest in programming and...

This paper evaluates the impact of "Coding Girls", an educational enrichment program designed to address the underrepresentation of women and girls in the fields of science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) in Italy by stimulating young female students' interest in programming and...

Expected earnings matter for college major choices, and majors differ in both their average earnings and the age profile of their earnings. We show that students' family background is strongly related to the earnings paths of the major they choose. Students with more educated parents, especially...