Job Market Paper:
"Daddy's girl: Daughters, managerial decisions, and gender inequality", with Nina Smith
Coverage: Marginal Revolution, The Visible Hand Podcast (Job Market Edition), medium.com
We study the role of managers' gender attitudes in shaping gender inequality within the workplace. Using Danish registry data, we exploit the birth of a daughter as opposed to a son as a plausibly exogeneous shock to male managers' gender attitudes and compare within-firm changes in women's labor outcomes depending on the manager's newborn gender. We find that women's relative earnings and employment increase by 4.4% and 2.9% respectively following the birth of the manager's first daughter. These effects are driven by an increase in managers' propensity to replace male workers by hiring women with comparable education, hours worked, and earnings. In line with managers' ability to substitute men with comparable women, we do not detect any significant effect on firm performance. Finally, we find evidence of rapid behavioral responses which intensify over time, suggesting that both salience and direct exposure to themes of gender equality contribute to our results.
Published Papers:
"Gender gaps and the structure of local labor markets", with Barbara Petrongolo
Labour Economics 64, 2020
In this paper we discuss some strands of the recent literature on the evolution of gender gaps and their driving forces. We will revisit key stylized facts about gender gaps in employment and wages in a few high-income countries. We then discuss and build on one gender-neutral force behind the rise in female employment, namely the rise of the service economy. This is also related to the polarization of female employment and to the geographic distribution of jobs, which is expected to be especially relevant for female employment prospects. We finally turn to currently debated causes of remaining gender gaps and discuss existing evidence on labor market consequences of women’s heavier caring responsibilities in the household. In particular, we highlight sharp gender differences in commuting behavior and discuss how women’s stronger distaste for commuting time may feed into gender pay gaps.
Working Papers:
"Female Representation and Talent Allocation in Entrepreneurship: The Role of Early Exposure to Entrepreneurs", with Mikkel Baggesgaard Mertz and Viola Salvestrini
Winner of the best paper award at the CSEF-RCFS Conference on Finance, Labor, and Inequality 2022
Winner of the UniCredit best paper award on Gender Economics 2022
"Hiring Frictions and Firm Growth", with Thomas Le Barbanchon and Julien Sauvagnat (New Draft!)
"Mind the cap: The effects of regulating bankers' pay", with Jordy Meekes
Work in Progress:
"From minority to majority: how gender diversity affects the type and quality of decisions", with Viola Salvestrini (data collection in progress)
This project was awarded the 2021 EIEF Grant
"Think-Manager Think-Male: The role of unconscious discrimination in the workplace", with Paola Profeta and Lorenzo Spadavecchia (draft coming soon!)
This project was awarded the 2021 and 2022 UniCredit Cordusio Research Grant
"Daddy's girl: Daughters, managerial decisions, and gender inequality", with Nina Smith
Coverage: Marginal Revolution, The Visible Hand Podcast (Job Market Edition), medium.com
We study the role of managers' gender attitudes in shaping gender inequality within the workplace. Using Danish registry data, we exploit the birth of a daughter as opposed to a son as a plausibly exogeneous shock to male managers' gender attitudes and compare within-firm changes in women's labor outcomes depending on the manager's newborn gender. We find that women's relative earnings and employment increase by 4.4% and 2.9% respectively following the birth of the manager's first daughter. These effects are driven by an increase in managers' propensity to replace male workers by hiring women with comparable education, hours worked, and earnings. In line with managers' ability to substitute men with comparable women, we do not detect any significant effect on firm performance. Finally, we find evidence of rapid behavioral responses which intensify over time, suggesting that both salience and direct exposure to themes of gender equality contribute to our results.
Published Papers:
"Gender gaps and the structure of local labor markets", with Barbara Petrongolo
Labour Economics 64, 2020
In this paper we discuss some strands of the recent literature on the evolution of gender gaps and their driving forces. We will revisit key stylized facts about gender gaps in employment and wages in a few high-income countries. We then discuss and build on one gender-neutral force behind the rise in female employment, namely the rise of the service economy. This is also related to the polarization of female employment and to the geographic distribution of jobs, which is expected to be especially relevant for female employment prospects. We finally turn to currently debated causes of remaining gender gaps and discuss existing evidence on labor market consequences of women’s heavier caring responsibilities in the household. In particular, we highlight sharp gender differences in commuting behavior and discuss how women’s stronger distaste for commuting time may feed into gender pay gaps.
Working Papers:
"Female Representation and Talent Allocation in Entrepreneurship: The Role of Early Exposure to Entrepreneurs", with Mikkel Baggesgaard Mertz and Viola Salvestrini
Winner of the best paper award at the CSEF-RCFS Conference on Finance, Labor, and Inequality 2022
Winner of the UniCredit best paper award on Gender Economics 2022
"Hiring Frictions and Firm Growth", with Thomas Le Barbanchon and Julien Sauvagnat (New Draft!)
"Mind the cap: The effects of regulating bankers' pay", with Jordy Meekes
Work in Progress:
"From minority to majority: how gender diversity affects the type and quality of decisions", with Viola Salvestrini (data collection in progress)
This project was awarded the 2021 EIEF Grant
"Think-Manager Think-Male: The role of unconscious discrimination in the workplace", with Paola Profeta and Lorenzo Spadavecchia (draft coming soon!)
This project was awarded the 2021 and 2022 UniCredit Cordusio Research Grant
