Everywhere around the world, whether in developing or developed countries, women earn less than men. This phenomenon is in no way new and it has been investigated for many years. Still, in today’s modern society, the wage gap does not appear to be closing. In times of economic instability, such as the economic crisis, the progress towards equality may be pushed back, since specific groups, sectors, and occupations may be affected differently. Therefore, the purpose of this study is to investigate the Italian gender wage gap with a closer look at the fluctuations during the period of the financial crisis. In order to analyse and understand the fluctuations of the pay gap, the three main theories used in the research are the human capital theory, occupational segregation, and theories regarding the labour market structure. By applying the Oaxaca-Blinder decomposition method, this study analyses to what extent the gap could be explained by differences in observable characteristics, such as level of education or age, and how much remains unexplained. The empirical model is applied to the Italian Survey of Household Income and Wealth (SHIW) microdata between the period of 2002 and 2016. The main findings show that the Italian gender wage gap, for the most part, remains unexplained. This indicates that the differentials in pay cannot be accounted for by differences in observable characteristics, such as education, age, contract type. The results of this research show that the Italian wage gap was, to some extent, negatively affected by the financial crisis. Furthermore, implemented austerity measures were found not to have significant negative impacts on the gap, which only increased in the initial phase of the crisis.

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This dissertation consists of three chapters concerning topics in economic history and labor economics. The first chapter studies how the 1906 San Francisco Fire impacted the biographies of those who lost their homes in the fire, while the second chapter shows that destination quality is a key determinant for the returns to childhood migration. The third chapter proposes a novel strategy to estimate the gender wage gap. The first chapter explores the short- and long-run consequences of the 1906 San Francisco Fire, one of the largest urban fires in American history. I use linked US Census records to follow San Francisco residents and their sons from 1900 to 1940. Implementing a spatial regression discontinuity design across the boundary of the razed district to identify the effect of the fire, I find that the fire displaced households away from San Francisco in the short- and medium-term, it forced men into lower-paying occupations, and out of entrepreneurship. Constructing a novel measure of kin presence, I provide suggestive evidence for risk-sharing among extended family in San Francisco, which mitigated the disruptive effects of the fire. While individuals recover over time in many dimensions, the negative effect on business ownership is persistent over decades. Moreover, affected children have lower educational attainment. Therefore, my findings reject the hope for a “reversal of fortune” for the victims, in contrast to what is found for more recent natural disasters such as hurricane Katrina. In the second chapter, I show that destination quality, measured as average educational attainment among permanent residents, is a key determinant for the returns to childhood migration in Indonesia. First, I document that average differences in educational outcomes are small between children who moved domestically and those who did not. However, conditional on having migrated, destination turns out to be very important. Exploiting variation in the age of migration, I show that children who spend more time growing up in better districts have higher graduation rates and more years of completed schooling. These effects are persistent and result in better labor market outcomes. In the third chapter (joint with Hannah Illing and Linh Tô), we propose a novel strategy to estimate the gender wage gap by comparing men and women who succeed each other in the same job position. We identify unexpected worker deaths in German social security data in 1980-2019, and then compute the wage gap between the deceased worker and their successor for different gender combinations. We find that holding the job position constant, men who replace deceased women earn substantially higher wages. The opposite is true when women follow deceased men. The implied "replacement gender wage gap" in the 1980 to 2019 period is about 15 to 19 percent. In addition, we find that the gap has decreased over time, and it is higher in West Germany compared to East Germany.

Thesis advisor: Claudia C. Olivetti / Thesis advisor: Theodore T. Papageorgiou / This dissertation consists of a collection of three essays in Labor Economics, all studying the careers of young American workers. The first two essays, Chapter 1 and Chapter 2, analyze the early-career gender wage gap among recent cohorts of highly educated US workers. The third essay, Chapter 3, analyzes long-run changes occurred over the last four decades in the supply of overtime work among American employees. Chapter 1 provides an in-depth analysis of the evolution of the careers of Millennial American college graduates from labor market entry to five to ten years later. Using data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (1997) I neatly reconstruct workers' careers from labor market entry and provide a variety of reduced-form evidence showing that gender differences in the wage gains that workers obtain when they change jobs determine a large portion of the early-career gender wage gap and of its expansion over years of experience. I show that these results are robust and hold irrespective of young workers' marital and parental status. In light of the results provided in Chapter 1, in Chapter 2 I study the contribution of the main determinants of wage gains from job changes to the early-career gender wage gap among highly-educated American workers. Specifically, first, I estimate a structural model of hedonic job search to estimate the extent to which men and women differ in terms of search frictions, of preferences for valuable amenities (flexibility and parental leave) and of the wage offers received conditional on the provision of amenities. Second, I use the model estimates to perform a series of counterfactual analyses and quantify the impact of search frictions, preferences and wage offers on the early-career gender wage gap and on its expansion due to job search and job changes. I find that young men and women share similar preferences for amenities. Compared to men, however, women are offered lower wages, and predominantly so in jobs that provide benefits. Since these jobs typically offer higher wages too, the gender pay gap expands as workers climb the job ladder to enter employment relationships that offer better wage-benefits bundles. The higher price that women pay for amenities explains 42% of the early-career growth in the wage gap that the model attributes to job search and job changes. The remaining portion is explained by the lower wages offered to women in jobs that do not provide benefits (25%) and by women's stronger search frictions (33%). In Chapter 3 I study the determinants of long-run trends in overtime work. I document that work hours have been increasing in the United States in the 1980s and 1990s and steadily declining in the 2000s and 2010s, and that these trends were predominantly driven by secular changes in the share of young, salaried employees working long hours (more than 40 hours per week) in relatively high-pay jobs. I then provide a model that explains the evolving long-run trends in overtime as an outcome of underlying changes in labor demand that affected the life-cycle wage gains that employees expect to obtain when supplying overtime work hours. I empirically test and validate the implications of the model, and show that long-run changes in the wage premia for working long hours can explain the rise and fall in overtime work that I document. Finally, I estimate long-run trends in persistent and transitory wage dispersion and show that persistent wage dispersion grew in the 1980s and 1990s and declined later on. To the extent that shocks to wage gains from working long hours result into an increase in the spread of permanent income across employees typically supplying different amounts of work hours, I show that a rise and fall in wage premia for overtime work reconciles the observed reversed-U shaped trend in both overtime work and persistent wage dispersion. These results are suggestive that, after surging in the 1980s and the 1990s, the “fortunes of the youth'” may have been declining later on, due to shifts in labor demand that flattened the life-cycle wage profiles that young, salaried employees can obtain when supplying long work hours. These results can also help reconcile recent evidence that the demand for skill and cognitive tasks and the college wage premium have been declining, while the age wage gap has been increasing. Conversely, the results I obtain question theories that explain long-run trends in US men's labor supply through secular increases in the marginal value of leisure due to improvements in leisure technology. / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2022. / Submitted to: Boston College. Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: Economics.

This thesis analyzes the relation between female representation in private sector decision-making positions and the two predicted variables: the gender wage gap and the average female private-sector wage. Using regional data for Sweden’s 290 municipalities during the year 2014- 2018, OLS and panel fixed effect regression analysis is performed. A gender wage gap exists in all of Sweden’s municipalities. It is found that an increase in the representation of female decision-makers in the private sector significantly adds to the narrowing of the gender wage gap. The relation between female representation in private sector decision-making and average female wages is not found significant. Municipalities can use these findings as motivations for the importance of promoting female managers and when working to reduce the stigma and social norms surrounding females in decision-making positions.

The analysis studies the spill-over effect of the gender equality of the trading partner on the gender wage gap. The aim is to contribute to the gender aspect of the literature studying the effect of globalisation on wage inequality, and especially to the very limited literature on the spill-over effect of the trading partner. It uses a European multi-country approach and analyses both exports and imports, which has not been done previously. For the empirical analysis, cross-country panel data is used to construct a fixed effects model. The results show a strong positive effect on the gender wage gap for both exports and imports, although the effect is stronger for imports. It indicates that a change in the gender equality of the trading partners has a significant effect on the gender wage gap. Furthermore, the analysisis extended to also analyse the explaining mechanisms raised by the literature. The results give an indication that certain groups based on technology intensity are driving the results, implying that the explaining mechanism could be the adoption of technology favoring women, but needs further research to draw any conclusions. All in all, the results provide evidence on the existence of a spill-over effect and highlights the importance of including both imports and exports for further research into the explaining mechanisms.

京都大学 / 新制・課程博士 / 博士(経済学) / 甲第23669号 / 経博第652号 / 新制||経||300(附属図書館) / 京都大学大学院経済学研究科経済学専攻 / (主査)教授 山田 憲, 教授 西山 慶彦, 准教授 高野 久紀 / 学位規則第4条第1項該当 / Doctor of Economics / Kyoto University / DGAM

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Irrespective of professional experience and educational background, gender pay disparity is a problem in the federal government. Women have to overcome salary barriers, such as agency segregation, position segregation, and invisible barriers known as the glass ceiling and the glass wall. Recent studies have indicated that human capital variables, people skills, discrimination, and policies all contribute to gender pay disparity in America's workforce. However, there are limited studies that focus on the indirect factors that also contribute to gender pay inequality. The purpose of this quantitative research was to investigate the relationship between wages and job responsibility (as defined by an employee's job series) for all federal employees within the GS14 pay grade working in the state of Virginia. The data source for this retrospective study came from the December 2014 archived federal employee records that were retrieved from the Office of Personnel Management website. Ordinary least square regression modeling was used to analyze the data collected from the Office of Personnel Management central personnel data file. The results from the data analysis demonstrated a significant relationship between job responsibility and wages. The results from the data analysis demonstrated that men earned higher wages than did their female counterparts and were given more authority in the technical and professional job series. This study promotes positive social change because it confirms and extends understanding of the gender wage gap in the federal workforce. The findings from this research encourage policy makers to revisit existing policies and implement new policies aimed at ensuring women receive pay equal to their male counterparts.

[pt] Essa tese é composta por três artigos empíricos independentes. No primeiro capítulo é avaliado em que medida diferenças no histórico profissional entre os gêneros influenciam o diferencial de salários observado no mercado de trabalho formal brasileiro. Para isto, utiliza-se uma amostra aleatória e representativa de 1 porcento dos trabalhadores presentes na RAIS / MTE entre os anos de 1994 e 2009. A partir dessas informações é reconstruída a trajetória profissional dos indivíduos pertencentes à amostra. As estratégias empíricas exploram a característica longitudinal dessa base de dados para gerar informações complementares acerca do diferencial de salários entre gêneros. Os resultados revelam que as medidas de histórico profissional têm impactos economicamente relevantes sobre os rendimentos individuais. Períodos de ausência no mercado de trabalho reduzem em média os rendimentos e um maior engajamento dos trabalhadores implica salários maiores. Entretanto, a inserção dessas medidas mais fidedignas de histórico profissional dos trabalhadores acarreta uma diminuição de no máximo 10 porcento na magnitude do coeficiente associado ao diferencial de salários entre os gêneros, ou seja, um impacto bastante reduzido. O segundo capítulo investiga a importância relativa de duas dimensões da qualidade dos professores para a aprendizagem em matemática e língua portuguesa dos alunos da oitava série do ensino fundamental na rede de ensino paulista. Com este propósito, adota-se uma abordagem de função de produção educacional e a principal especificação utiliza um modelo de valor adicionado com controle para o desempenho passado dos estudantes. Os resultados mostram que tanto o conhecimento quanto as atividades pedagógicas dos professores em sala de aula têm impacto positivo e estatisticamente significante sobre a aquisição de habilidades cognitivas. Entretanto, o efeito do conhecimento dos docentes apresenta uma magnitude pequena em termos econômicos. Já os impactos associados à adoção frequente de práticas pedagógicas eficazes tem magnitude bastante relevante. Por exemplo, a intervenção de substituir um professor de matemática que não passa lição de casa sempre por outro que o faz aumenta a proficiência dos alunos em aproximadamente 12 porcento de um desvio padrão da distribuição de notas. O terceiro capítulo analisa a relação entre identidade partidária e as escolhas políticas para o contexto das municipalidades brasileiras no ciclo político entre 2004 e 2008. Para isto, utiliza-se o arcabouço de regressão com descontinuidade para estimar o efeito causal local de um município ser governado por um partido de esquerda ao invés de um de direita sobre as políticas públicas. Os resultados apontam que governos de esquerda gastam proporcionalmente menos com urbanismo e saúde e mais com administração. No entanto, esses maiores gastos administrativos não estão associados a um inchaço da máquina pública com servidores. / [en] This thesis is composed of three independent empirical articles. In the first chapter is evaluated to what extent differences in labor supply factors and careers by gender influence the wage gap observed in the brazilian formal labor market. For this, we use a 1 percent representative random sample of the workers in RAIS / MTE between the years 1994 and 2009. From this information is retrieved the career path of individuals in the sample. The empirical strategies exploit the longitudinal feature of this database to generate complementary information about the gender wage gap. The results show that the labor market history measures have economically relevant impacts on individual incomes. Career interruptions reduce average earnings and workers with continuous labor market attachment have higher wages. However, the inclusion into the analysis of these more reliable job experience variables results in a reduction of up to 10 percent in the magnitude of the gender wage gap estimates. This represents a quite reduced influence. The second chapter investigates the relative importance of two dimensions of teacher quality for the learning in mathematics and Portuguese of eighth graders of the elementary school in São Paulo state. For this purpose, we adopt an approach based on the educational production function and the main specification uses a value added model with control for the students past grades. The results show that both the teachers knowledge and pedagogical activities inside the classroom have a positive and statistically significant impact on the acquisition of cognitive skills. However, the teachers knowledge effect has a small economic magnitude. Yet the impacts associated with the frequent application of effective teaching practices are quite large. For instance, the intervention defined by the replacing a math teacher who does not always give homework for another that does it, increases the students proficiency in approximately 12 percent of a standard deviation of the grades distribution. The third chapter examines the relationship between political partisanship and government size for the context of the brazilian municipalities after 2004 local election. In order to achieve this, we use a regression discontinuity research design to estimate the local causal effect on political choices of a municipality being governed by a left-wing party instead of a right-wing one. The results show that left-wing governments spend proportionately less on urbanism and health, and more on administration. Nevertheless, this higher administrative spending is not associated with an excessive hiring of public employees.