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.

Gender-segregated labor markets remain a barrier to economic equality, significantly con- tributing to the persistent income disparities between men and women. While extensive literature has documented the prevalent wage gaps, it often attributes these disparities to educational attainment, career tenure, and familial obligations. This thesis focuses on the Swedish Armed Forces, a predominantly male-dominated organization, providing unique insights into organizational structures not extensively documented in current lit- erature. Using individual-level data from Statistical Sweden, a linear regression analysis investigates the gender wage gap, followed by a quantile regression to further explore gender variations across the income distribution. The results reveal a significant gender wage gap, although it has decreased over time and can be explained by individual char- acteristics. Persistent wage disparities in the labor market can often be attributed to the ongoing gender segregation in certain professions, where women, as minorities, tend to earn less. This uneven distribution where men predominantly occupy higher-ranked and higher-paid positions, exacerbates the income inequality. This structural imbalance not only reflects existing societal norms but also highlights the economic impact of occupa- tional segregation, which continues to disadvantage women.

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.

TITLE: THE GENDER WAGE GAP OF CIVIL SERVICE EMPLOYEES AT ILLINOIS PUBLIC FOUR-YEAR UNIVERSITIES

The gender wage gap in the labour market has long been a topic of study, highlighting the disadvantages faced by women in terms of earningscompared to men. This study aims to investigate if the Great Recession had additional impacts on women's earnings differentials. Using census data from 2006 to 2012 in the US, two different quantile regressions were conducted for various income quantiles. One regression excluded variables, while the other included socio-demographic characteristics. The results indicate clear wage differences for women before, during, and after the Great Recession.The first regression shows statistically significant negative correlations between logarithmic income and gender. The quantile regressions also reveal decrease in the gender wage gap during the recession, with education returns favouring women in 2008 and 2009 before returning to pre-recession levels. Additionally, the results suggest that married women and women with children tend to have lower earnings compared to their male counterparts.These findings provide evidence of a glass ceiling in the US labour market, which may have been exacerbated by the exogenous shock of the Great Recession.

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在台灣勞動市場中，性別薪資差異一直都存在著。在 2015 年，女性勞工平均薪資大約為男性平均薪資的 85.57%，這個比率在過去 20 年間一直不斷上升，顯示出性別薪資差異逐年地縮小。而在解釋性別薪資差異大小的變數中，產業是其中一個很重要的解釋變數，因此本研究利用台灣主計處的人力運用調查資料，檢驗產業間性別薪資差異與產業特性之間的關連。實證結果顯示出部分產業特性確實會影響產業間性別薪資差異的大小，該產業的平均勞工年齡越大，該產業的性別薪資差異越小；工作地點在北部的比率越高， 會使得該產業的性別薪資差異越小；其他像是平均勞工任期長短 、特定職業的比率等等也會影響該產業內性別薪資差異的大小。 / In Taiwan, gender wage gap has existed for long in the labor market. However, proportion of average female salary to average male salary was about 85.57% in 2015 and this ratio has been growing in recent years. Besides, among all factors that can account for the gender wage gaps, industry plays an important role. Using data from the Manpower Utilization Survey, this study examines the inter-industry gender wage gaps in Taiwan with a focus on the correlation between these inter-industry gender wage gaps and characteristics of different industry sectors. The results confirm that some industrial characteristics do affect the magnitude of sex discrimination. Average age, job tenure, proportion of certain working locations and specific occupations have an impact on inter-industry gender wage gaps.

Die vorliegende Dissertation setzt sich aus drei Aufsätzen zusammen: zwei im Bereich der Arbeitsmarktökonomie und einer im Bereich der politischen Ökonomie. Der erste Aufsatz untersucht die Rolle der zunehmenden Firmenheterogenität für die Stagnation des Gender Wage Gaps auf dem westdeutschen Arbeitsmarkt in den 1990er und 2000er Jahren. Die Ergebnisse zeigen, dass die steigende Firmenheterogenität während dieses Zeitraums einen Rückgang des Gender Wage Gaps um 15% bzw. 3,6 Log-Prozentpunkte verhindert hat. Darüber hinaus zeigen die Analysen, dass eine zunehmende Lohnflexibilisierung, bedingt durch einen Rückgang der Tarifbindung und wachsende Dezentralisierungs- und Flexibilisierungstendenzen innerhalb der vorhandenen Tarifbindungsregime, den Anstieg der Lohnungleichheit zwischen Betrieben und folglich die Lohnungleichheit zwischen Männern und Frauen verstärkt hat. Der zweite Aufsatz untersucht die Auswirkungen des Anfang der 1990er Jahre von Flüchtlingsmigranten verursachten, plötzlichen Anstiegs des Arbeitskräfteangebots auf Löhne und Beschäftigung der einheimischen Arbeitnehmer. Die empirischen Analysen zeigen, dass ein 1%iger Zuwachs in der Beschäftigung von Migranten mit einer Reduzierung des lokalen Lohn- und Beschäftigungswachstums in den betroffenen Regionen um durchschnittlich etwa 0,68 bzw. 1,13% einhergeht; auf längere Sicht zeigen sich indes keine negativen Auswirkungen. Zwei Drittel des lokalen Beschäftigungsrückgangs werden durch entsprechende Beschäftigungsgewinne in solchen Regionen kompensiert, die von der Flüchtlingszuwanderung nicht betroffen sind. Die Unterschiede zwischen kurz- und langfristigen Konsequenzen sowie die Umverteilung der Beschäftigung zwischen Regionen sind für die politische Evaluation der Vor- und Nachteile von Migration von Bedeutung. Der dritte Aufsatz untersucht, ob die Parteienlandschaft im Gemeinderat einen Effekt auf die Struktur von Gemeindezusammenlegungen hat, indem sie die Wahrscheinlichkeit der Wiederwahl und folglich des Machterhalts der im Amt befindlichen politischen Entscheidungsträger beeinflusst. Die empirischen Ergebnisse deuten darauf hin, dass die Parteienstruktur für die Realisierung von Gemeindezusammenlegungen von Bedeutung ist. / This dissertation is composed of three essays: two in the field of labour economics and one in political economics. The first essay studies the role of growing workplace heterogeneity for the stagnation of the gender pay gap on the West German labour market during the 1990s and 2000s. The analysis shows that the expansion of workplace-specific wage premiums over that time period prevented the gender wage gap from narrowing by around 15% or 3.6 log points. This effect is not driven by a relocation of men and women across high and low wage firms, but is entirely attributable to a widening in the distribution of wage premiums. The study further shows that rising wage flexibilisation, facilitated by deunionisation and decentralisation tendencies within unions, has led to higher rent-sharing elasticities, and thereby catalysed the role of workplace heterogeneity for overall inequality and the wage gap between genders. The second essay investigates the impact of a refugee-driven labour supply shock on native wages and employment. By exploiting a large and unexpected refugee wave hitting the West German labour market between 1988 and 1993, the analysis shows that an increase in local immigrant employment by 1% reduces native wages and employment by about 0.68 and 1.13%, respectively; in the longer perspective, however, these negative effects disappear. The study also shows that about two-thirds of the local employment decline is compensated by corresponding employment gains in regions not affected by immigration. Both findings—the difference between short and long run effects and the redistribution of native employment across regions — are important for the political evaluation of immigration. The third essay investigates the political determinants of municipality amalgamations. By exploiting a boundary reform in the state of Brandenburg, which reduced the number of municipalities by about 70%, the study asks whether party representation in the town council influences the structure of municipality mergers by affecting the political decision makers’ probability to remain in power. The empirical estimates suggest that political representation matters for the structure of mergers that materialise.

Though successively decreasing over time, gender wage gaps are still large in all western countries. When gender wage gaps exist, there is an unequal distribution of economic power between men and women. This paper examines variables that significantly relate to the differences in the size of the gender wage gap across Swedish municipalities. With data gathered from Statistics Sweden and the Swedish Social Insurance Agency for the year 2011, a series of OLS regressions are performed. By examining what variables are statistically related to variations in the gender wage gap over municipalities, for example, average wage, human capital, gender segregation and work absence, the aim is to further contribute to the field of gender economics. The results in this paper show that the gender wage gap exists in all 290 Swedish municipalities. It varies greatly with women earning only 56 percent of men’s wages in Danderyd to women earning 87 percent of men’s wages in Haparanda. In municipalities where average wages are high the gender wage gap is large. Long-term illness and lowered capacity to work are strong factors negatively affecting the gender wage gap. In municipalities where women are more affected by long-term illness and lowered capacity to work than men the gender wage gap is larger. Furthermore, there is a significant relation between the gender wage gap and human capital. The gender wage gap is larger in municipalities where a large share of the population has a higher education.