Nearly all studies of gender differences in wages and advancement find that the primary difference between the economic standing of women and men lies in their distribution across occupations and industries. In my dissertation I use micro-econometric techniques to examine different aspects of the evolution and impact of gender-specific occupational structures. The first essay evaluates the capacity of a hierarchical model of discrimination and segregation to explain the gender wage gap within firms for a regional grocery store chain that lost a title VII class action lawsuit for not promoting women into the higher managerial positions. In the process the analysis raises questions about the appropriateness of standard wage model specifications for making inferences about wage determination in a setting where wages for each job are set equal for men and women by precise union rules. The second essay expands the theory of hierarchical segregation to examine changes in the wage and occupational structure over time with panel data. This allows one to analyze the effects of hierarchical segregation over time and observe whether the filing of the lawsuit alone is sufficient to change discriminatory behavior by the firm. The final essay examines how major economic crises, including two World Wars and a Great Depression, led to changes in gender segregation in industrial and clerical jobs.

This dissertation comprises two essays. While the topics of both essays are different both are interrelated on the base of economic development. The first essay examines ethnic wage gaps on segmented labor markets with evidence from Latin American countries. The second essay revisits the determinants of fiscal decentralization with an emphasis on the role that geography plays in determining fiscal decentralization. The first essay contributes to limited literature on ethnic wage gaps in Latin America. It examines ethnic wage gaps for workers in formal and informal labor markets. Using data from Latin American countries we estimate and examine across-ethnic wage gaps for informal and formal markets, their changes over time, factors that explain their differences, and the wage gap distribution. More specifically, we verify that different ethnic wage gaps do exist across formal and informal markets; they behave differently not only at their means but also along the wage distribution. The results indicate that higher ethnic wage gaps in informal sectors exist not only on average but also throughout the distribution. In addition, we find that wage gaps have declined significantly over the last 10 years. we explain this by examining changes in the prices of institutional factors and changes in human capital endowments. The distributional analysis shows a decrease in the unexplained component, especially in the top part of the distribution. The second essay contributes to the existing literature on the determinants of fiscal decentralization by motivating theoretically and exploiting in depth the empirical relevance that geography has as a determinant of fiscal decentralization. The relationship between decentralization and geography is based on the logic that more geographically diverse countries show greater heterogeneity among their citizens, including their preferences and needs for public goods and services provisions. Communications and physical distance are also a very important issue and play a key role on the effect of geography over time. (Lora et. al., 2003) argue geography plays a key role in economic and social development, as well as in the institutional design of the countries; yet, this effect could be enhanced (or diminished) in the presence of better physical infrastructure or communications. The theoretical model in this paper builds on the work by Arzaghi and Henderson (2002) and Panizza (1999). For the empirical estimation, we use a panel data set for approximately 91 countries for the period 1960-2005. Physical geography is measured along several dimensions, including elevation, land area and climate. We construct a geographical fragmentation index and test its effect on fiscal decentralization. In addition, we interact the geographical fragmentation index with time-variant infrastructure variables in order to test the effect that infrastructure and communications have on the relationship between geography and fiscal decentralization. For robustness, we construct Gini coefficients for in-country elevation and climate. We find a positive and strong correlation between geographical factors and fiscal decentralization. We also find that while the development of infrastructure (in transportation, communications, etc.) tends to reduce the effect of geography on decentralization, this effect is rather small and mostly statistically insignificant, meaning that the impact of geography survives over time. The strategy has additional value because geography may be used as an instrument for decentralization in future econometric estimations where decentralization is used as an explanatory variable, but may be suspected to be endogenous to the economic process being studied (economic growth, political instability, macroeconomic stability, income distribution, etc.).

This dissertation comprises two essays. While the topics of both essays are different both are interrelated on the base of economic development. The first essay examines ethnic wage gaps on segmented labor markets with evidence from Latin American countries. The second essay revisits the determinants of fiscal decentralization with an emphasis on the role that geography plays in determining fiscal decentralization. The first essay contributes to limited literature on ethnic wage gaps in Latin America. It examines ethnic wage gaps for workers in formal and informal labor markets. Using data from Latin American countries we estimate and examine across-ethnic wage gaps for informal and formal markets, their changes over time, factors that explain their differences, and the wage gap distribution. More specifically, we verify that different ethnic wage gaps do exist across formal and informal markets; they behave differently not only at their means but also along the wage distribution. The results indicate that higher ethnic wage gaps in informal sectors exist not only on average but also throughout the distribution. In addition, we find that wage gaps have declined significantly over the last 10 years. we explain this by examining changes in the prices of institutional factors and changes in human capital endowments. The distributional analysis shows a decrease in the unexplained component, especially in the top part of the distribution. The second essay contributes to the existing literature on the determinants of fiscal decentralization by motivating theoretically and exploiting in depth the empirical relevance that geography has as a determinant of fiscal decentralization. The relationship between decentralization and geography is based on the logic that more geographically diverse countries show greater heterogeneity among their citizens, including their preferences and needs for public goods and services provisions. Communications and physical distance are also a very important issue and play a key role on the effect of geography over time. (Lora et. al., 2003) argue geography plays a key role in economic and social development, as well as in the institutional design of the countries; yet, this effect could be enhanced (or diminished) in the presence of better physical infrastructure or communications. The theoretical model in this paper builds on the work by Arzaghi and Henderson (2002) and Panizza (1999). For the empirical estimation, we use a panel data set for approximately 91 countries for the period 1960-2005. Physical geography is measured along several dimensions, including elevation, land area and climate. We construct a geographical fragmentation index and test its effect on fiscal decentralization. In addition, we interact the geographical fragmentation index with time-variant infrastructure variables in order to test the effect that infrastructure and communications have on the relationship between geography and fiscal decentralization. For robustness, we construct Gini coefficients for in-country elevation and climate. We find a positive and strong correlation between geographical factors and fiscal decentralization. We also find that while the development of infrastructure (in transportation, communications, etc.) tends to reduce the effect of geography on decentralization, this effect is rather small and mostly statistically insignificant, meaning that the impact of geography survives over time. The strategy has additional value because geography may be used as an instrument for decentralization in future econometric estimations where decentralization is used as an explanatory variable, but may be suspected to be endogenous to the economic process being studied (economic growth, political instability, macroeconomic stability, income distribution, etc.).