China's One‐Child Policy and ‘the Mystery of Missing Women’: Ethnic Minorities and Male‐Biased Sex Ratios*

Recent estimates suggest that as many as 40 million women are ‘missing’ in China. We exploit a special provision in the Chinese one‐child policy (OCP; allowing for preferential treatment of ethnic minority groups) to revisit the mystery of these missing women, and in particular to explore the contribution of China's OCP in distorting sex ratios. Our results imply that preference for boys is the main driver of the gender gap, and that the OCP is responsible for about half of it. This is true even before ultrasound technologies for prenatal gender determination were available. Not surprisingly, interaction between the OCP and ultrasound technologies has contributed to the gender gap.     

Catching up to girls: Understanding the gender imbalance in educational attainment within race

We estimate a sequential model of schooling to assess the major contributing factors to the large gender imbalance in educational attainment within racial groups. First, we find that differences between males and females in measures of early behavior account for the majority of the gender gap for each racial group. Second, we show that black males have the largest response to improvements in family background characteristics, such that equalizing the distribution of family background characteristics for black and white youths reduces the gender gap in college enrollment among black youth by 50%.     

Education,Occupation and Career Expectations: Determinants of the Gender Pay Gap for UK Graduates*

Despite anti‐discrimination policies, women are paid 20% less then men in the UK. A large proportion of this wage gap is usually left unexplained. In this paper, I investigate whether the unexplained component is due to mis‐specification. Using a sample of recent UK graduates, I examine the role of choice variables (subject of study and occupation) as well as career expectations and aspirations. The evidence indicates that women are more altruistic and less career‐oriented than men. Career break expectations, for example, explain 10% of the gender wage gap in the favoured model. By omitting attitudinal variables, most studies are likely to overestimate the unexplained component of the gender wage gap. Women with a more traditional view concerning childrearing are also found to have less intensive search behaviour. Since aspirations may reflect perceived discrimination or social pressure, current legislations are unlikely to reduce the gender wage gap.     

Monopsonistic discrimination, worker turnover, and the gender wage gap

Motivated by models of worker flows, we argue in this paper that monopsonistic discrimination may be a substantial factor behind the overall gender wage gap. Using matched employer–employee data from Norway, we estimate establishment-specific wage premiums separately for men and women, conditioning on fixed individual effects. Regressions of worker turnover on the wage premium identify less wage elastic labour supply facing each establishment of women than that of men. Workforce gender composition is strongly related to employers' wage policies. The results suggest that 70–90% of the gender wage gap for low-educated workers may be attributed to differences in labour market frictions between men and women, while the similar figures for high-educated workers ranges from 20 to 70%.     

Changing Pay Systems,Occupational Concentration and the Gender Pay Gap: Evidence from Australia and the UK

While aggregate level pay equity comparisons between Australia and the UK confirm expectations based on their different wage distributions and regulatory systems, observation of trends and occupational level analysis reveal additional complexity. Our analysis suggests the need for a multi‐faceted approach to closing the average gender pay gap.     

The causal effect of the number of children on gender‐specific labour supply elasticities to the firm

We estimate the effect of the number of children on the female and the male wage elasticities of labour supply to the firm using instrumental variables estimation in data from the US Current Population Survey (2000–19). Parents' number of children is instrumented with the sex mix of their first two children. We find that the male wage elasticity of labour supply to the firm significantly increases with the number of children, while the female elasticity is not significantly altered. That is, we find evidence that male labour markets become more competitive with the arrival of children. Our results also show that firms have substantial monopsonistic power and, in line with the monopsony theory of the gender pay gap, that male labour markets are more competitive than female markets.     

LAND REFORM AS SOCIAL JUSTICE: THE CASE OF SOUTH AFRICA

Hayek argues that when governments violate people's rights by imposing discriminatory laws it may be necessary to do something to correct the situation. He suggests limiting corrective actions in two ways: only address harms that occurred in the relatively recent past, and impose no new discrimination. As a result of a very long history of discriminatory legislation, black South Africans suffered substantial harms at the hands of past governments. Following the political transition in 1994, the new government implemented land reform policies designed, in part, to satisfy calls for social justice. This paper examines these policies in the context of Hayek's arguments.     

Noncognitive skills, occupational attainment, and relative wages

This paper examines whether men's and women's noncognitive skills influence their occupational attainment and, if so, whether this contributes to the disparity in their relative wages. We find that noncognitive skills have a substantial effect on the probability of employment in many, though not all, occupations in ways that differ by gender. Consequently, men and women with similar noncognitive skills enter occupations at very different rates. Women, however, have lower wages on average not because they work in different occupations than men do, but rather because they earn less than their male colleagues employed in the same occupation. On balance, women's noncognitive skills give them a slight wage advantage. Finally, we find that accounting for the endogeneity of occupational attainment more than halves the proportion of the overall gender wage gap that is unexplained.     

Does it Pay to Work for Free? Negative Selection and the Wage Returns to Volunteer Experience

This paper offers the first instrumental variables estimates of the wage returns to volunteer experience. The returns are substantial and differ considerably by gender. The results imply that the unequal valuation of volunteer experience by gender is more important in explaining the gender earnings gap than is the unequal valuation of part‐time paid work experience. The results also indicate negative selection into unpaid work. In a simple model of optimal volunteering, negative selection implies that a lower cost of volunteering would produce both an expanded and higher‐skilled pool of volunteers, and greater societal benefits from volunteer work.     

A Reexamination of How Athletic Success Impacts Graduation Rates

A BSTRACT . Past research has found conflicting evidence concerning whether higher levels of athletic success positively or negatively impact college graduation rates. This paper intends to improve on past research by separating the graduation rate of student-athletes from all other undergraduates. Results using generalized least squared estimation and paired t-tests from a sample of Division I schools suggest that neither the graduation rate for student-athletes nor the graduation rate for all other undergraduates is sensitive to the level of a school's athletic success. However, the graduation gap between student-athletes and all other undergraduates is sensitive to various measures of a school's athletic success. Women have higher graduation rates than men in general, and this gender graduation gap is exacerbated when focusing on student-athletes at schools with the most prominent athletic programs.     

A field experiment to study sex and age discrimination in the Madrid labour market

This article presents the findings of a field experiment carried out in Madrid which aims to analyse gender and age discrimination in hiring in the labour market of Madrid. A set of five pairs of fictitious man–woman curricula was sent in response to 1062 job offers in six occupations which were advertised on Internet over an eight-month period. It was quantified subsequently the extent to which the different firms contacted more or less the candidates of different sex, age and marital status. No discrimination is detected against women in terms of access to job interviews; however, discriminatory conduct is seen regarding the phenomenon of occupational gender segregation, in the sense that there is a continuance among employers of stereotyped views on the greater suitability of women for certain tasks. No evidence is found to indicate firms showing relative discrimination against married women with children in the first phase of hiring process. And a clear evidence of discrimination is obtained on the basis of age: firms show a substantial fall in interest over interviewing 38-year-old candidates (compared to those aged 24 or 28). This would imply that the tendency to discriminate against older workers may be high, and, what is more, it may start at a surprisingly young age.     

Breaking through the glass ceiling. Simulating policies to close the gender gap in the Italian academia

As gender discrimination in academia is still far from being resolved, the recent debate focuses on the policies that can be adopted to increase gender balance in university systems. We construct a virtual academia—scaling down Italian academia in 2019—and simulate the evolution of its gender composition using an agent-based model that considers the complex nature of gender discrimination. Our findings show that, despite the rhetoric of meritocracy, a one-hundred-year period would not be enough to close the gender gap, even assuming that female researchers have the same scientific productivity as their male colleagues. To achieve more gender equality, universities should implement a set of policies that includes maternity bonuses in the evaluation of the CVs of female candidates for promotion, rules for a more gender balanced composition of the committees evaluating candidates for promotion, and gender quotas in promotions to full professorships. The gender gap in the Italian academia will close only when all these policies are introduced simultaneously.     

Gender wage gap: A semi-parametric approach with sample selection correction

Sizeable gender differences in employment rates are observed in many countries. Sample selection into the workforce might therefore be a relevant issue when estimating gender wage gaps. We propose a semi-parametric estimator of densities in the presence of covariates which incorporates sample selection. We describe a simulation algorithm to implement counterfactual comparisons of densities. The proposed methodology is used to investigate the gender wage gap in Italy. We find that, when sample selection is taken into account, the gender wage gap widens, especially at the bottom of the wage distribution.     

Educational presorting and occupational segregation

This article concentrates on the measurement of both occupational and educational segregation between men and women of the Dutch labour force. The majority of studies which have been conducted in this area are rather one-sided, concentrating on occupational segregation only. However, occupational segregation can be split into three components. The first component concerns presorting as a consequence of the different educational choices made by boys and girls. The second component concerns postsorting (given their educational status), as a result of the differing occupational choices and opportunities for promotion between men and women during their careers. If men and women with the same educational background are directed towards different occupations, then postsorting may add to the occupational segregation which was already induced by the earlier educational segregation. This kind of postsorting increases the gap between occupational and educational segregation. The third component, which we refer to as reintegration, is also a kind of postsorting but narrowing the gap between occupational and educational segregation. This occurs when men with a `male type' of education and women with a `female type' of education come together in one occupation. Given that educational segregation of the labour force is fixed in the short term, reintegration is the only effective, but probably difficult affirmative action program to reduce occupational segregation in the short term. More usual programs are ineffective and can even be counterproductive. A more detailed insight into these three components is relevant when choosing the policy instruments needed to achieve equal employment opportunities for men and women. The paper shows that from 1979 until 1993/1994 educational segregation increased, but occupational segregation decreased. Partly, this is explained by increased reintegration, but the main cause of these developments is a clear increase in presorting in education.     

Sex discrimination in selection and compensation in Taiwan

This article describes the current status of women in the workplace in Taiwan. Statistical evidence shows sex segregation in the labour market. Discriminatory practices in the hiring process are documented via a content analysis of 7,037 classified ads. Overtly discriminatory actions, such as blatantly stated gender requirements in the classified ads, are shown to be still common in hiring practices. Census data on a gender gap in compensation shows that women in Taiwan evidently get less pay than men do for the same work. The ratio of female to male employees is significantly and negatively correlated with the ratio of female to male in pay. The higher the percentages of women in an industry, the lower the pay women get compared to men. Also, the ratio of female to male in pay is negatively related to the turnover rate. Companies that pay women fairly tend to enjoy lower turnover rates. The implications of these women's issues in human resource management in Taiwan are presented.     

Estimating and accounting for the output gap with large Bayesian vector autoregressions

We consider how to estimate the trend and cycle of a time series, such as real gross domestic product, given a large information set. Our approach makes use of the Beveridge–Nelson decomposition based on a vector autoregression, but with two practical considerations. First, we show how to determine which conditioning variables span the relevant information by directly accounting for the Beveridge–Nelson trend and cycle in terms of contributions from different forecast errors. Second, we employ Bayesian shrinkage to avoid overfitting in finite samples when estimating models that are large enough to include many possible sources of information. An empirical application with up to 138 variables covering various aspects of the US economy reveals that the unemployment rate, inflation, and, to a lesser extent, housing starts, aggregate consumption, stock prices, real money balances, and the federal funds rate contain relevant information beyond that in output growth for estimating the output gap, with estimates largely robust to substituting some of these variables or incorporating additional variables.     

Effects of demographic,experiential, and attitudinal factors on occupational sex stereotypes

The purpose of this study was to (a) compare the occupational sex stereotypes of 366 college students with those reported by Shinar in 1975, and (b) examine the relationships between demographic, experiential, and attitudinal variables and these occupational sex stereotypes. The results indicated a significant difference in occupational ratings from Shinar's study, with females' perceptions shifting more than males' perceptions. In addition, subjects' gender, tenure with female managers, and attitudes toward women as managers, were shown to be significant predictors of occuptational ratings. The implications of these findings for both employees and managers are then discussed.     

Is the gender gap in school performance affected by the sex of the teacher?

Girls outperform boys in school. We investigate whether the gender performance gap can be attributed to the fact that the teacher profession is female dominated, that is, is there a causal effect on student outcomes from having a same-sex teacher? Using data on upper-secondary school students and their teachers from the municipality of Stockholm, Sweden, we find that the gender performance differential is larger in subjects where the share of female teachers is higher. We argue, however, that this effect can not be interpreted as causal, mainly due to teacher selection into different subjects and non-random student-teacher matching. Exploring the fact that teacher turnover and student mobility give rise to variation in teacher's gender within student and subject, we estimate the effect on student outcomes of changing to a teacher of the same sex. We find no strong support for our initial hypothesis that a same-sex teacher improves student outcomes.     

Effects on earnings of the removal of direct discrimination in minimum wage rates: A validation of the Blinder decomposition

Prior to 1969, the Australian labour market was characterised by institutionalised gender wage discrimination. Wages for the majority of the workforce were set by government wage tribunals, and these tribunals set the wages of women at 75 percent of the male rate of pay. Following equal pay decisions in 1969 and 1972, the award rates of pay for all work were, by June 1975, to be determined without consideration of the sex of the worker. Examination of data from surveys conducted in 1973 and 1989 show that the removal of this institutionalised discrimination is captured by the Blinder (1973) and Oaxaca (1973) wage decompositions as a marked decline in the absolute value of the ‘discrimination’ component of the gender pay gap. The analyses also reveal some merit in the decomposition proposed by Cotton (1988).     

Assessing optimal credit growth for an emerging banking system

The paper sets forth a novel way to estimate the optimal level of credit growth for an emerging banking system. Contrary to the traditional credit-to-GDP gap indicator, credit growth is considered to be optimal when it does not accelerate credit risk measured by loan loss provisions. We provide empirical support for modelling the provision charge ratio dynamic by the quadratic function of the credit growth deviation from its optimal level. The operational framework consists of a simplified financial satellite with two equations representing credit growth and change in the provision charge ratio. Our empirical results show that a 3 percent (±1 pp margin) quarterly increase in credit to the private sector is, in nominal terms, optimal for financial stability and sustainable growth in Romania.