Labor Markets in Transition: Science and Migration after the Collapse of the Soviet Union: Dissertation Summary

The author studies the collapse of the Soviet Union to shed light on the behavior of workers and the human capital they embody. The first two essays concern the behavior of scientists. Using information from the earliest large-scale grant program for Soviet scientists, the author employs a regression discontinuity design to obtain causal estimates of the impact of grants. Findings show that the grants more than doubled researcher publications and induced scientists to remain in the science sector. The second essay studies the unprecedented exodus westward of scientists after the end of the USSR and examines both the selection of emigrants and the impact of emigration on their subsequent productivity. Scientists who emigrated after the end of the USSR were more productive after they left Russia compared to scientists who did not emigrate. The third essay analyzes immigrant selection before and after the USSR within a Roy Model framework. With microlevel data from Russia, Ukraine, and Bulgaria, along with data for immigrants in the United States, Spain, and Greece, immigrants’ predicted wages in the source country are compared with the predicted wages of their native counterparts. This thesis informs policymakers in the areas of labor, science, and immigration. The evidence in this dissertation suggests that after sharp economic changes, workers make important occupation and location decisions. Targeted policies can impact the size and productivity of the labor force during these times of transition, which can have lasting impacts on innovation, economic growth, and well-being

Closing the Gender Gap in Education: Does It Foretell the Closing of the Employment, Marriage, and Motherhood Gaps?

In this paper we examine several dimensions of gender disparity for a sample of 40 countries using micro-level data. We start by documenting the reversal of the gender education gap and ranking countries by the year in which it reversed. Then we turn to an analysis of the state of other gaps facing women: we compare men and women's labor force participation (the labor force participation gap), married and single women's labor force participation (the marriage gap), and mothers' and non-mother's labor force participation (the motherhood gap). We show that gaps still exist in these spheres in many countries, though there is significant heterogeneity among countries in terms of the size of and the speed at which these gaps are changing. We also show the relationship between the gaps and ask how much the participation gap would be reduced if the gaps in other spheres were eliminated. In general, we show that while there seems to be a relationship between the decline of the education gap and the reduction of the other gaps, the link is rather weak and highly heterogeneous across countries.

Institutions, markets and men's and women's wage inequality: evidence from Ukraine

Ukraine, the second largest country in the former Soviet bloc, is facing the challenge of rallying popular support for major structural reforms. As in most developing economies, the Orange Revolution government's success will depend on its ability to keep income distribution within an acceptable range. This paper is the first to make use of recent methodological developments in Lemieux's (2002) decomposition method to advance our understanding of the determinants of wage inequality in developing and transition economies. With an eye toward future policy, we apply this approach to the first large longitudinal micro data set for Ukrain

Career dynamics and gender gaps among employees in the microfinance sector

While microfinance institutions (MFIs) are increasingly important as employers in the developing world, there is little micro-level evidence on gender differences among MFI employees and MFIs' relation to economic development. We use a unique panel dataset of employees from Latin America's largest MFI to show that gender gaps favouring men for promotion exist primarily in the sales division, while there is a significant gender wage gap in the administrative division. Among loan officers in the sales division, the gender gap in promotion and wages reverses. Finally, female employees tend to work with clients with better loan terms and a history of loans with the institution

The Paper Trail of Knowledge Spillovers: Evidence from Patent Interferences

We show evidence of localized knowledge spillovers using a new database of US patent interferences terminated between 1998 and 2014. Interferences resulted when two or more independent parties submitted identical claims of invention nearly simultaneously. Following the idea that inventors of identical inventions share common knowledge inputs, interferences provide a new method for measuring knowledge spillovers. Interfering inventors are 1.4 to 4.0 times more likely to live in the same local area than matched control pairs of inventors. They are also more geographically concentrated than citation-linked inventors. Our results emphasize geographic distance as a barrier to tacit knowledge flows

Closing the Gender Gap in Education: Does it Foretell the Closing of the Employment, Marriage, and Motherhood Gaps?

In this paper we examine several dimensions of gender disparity for a sample of 40 countries using micro-level data. We start by documenting the reversal of the gender education gap and ranking countries by the year in which it reversed. Then we turn to an analysis of the state of other gaps facing women: we compare men and women’s labor force participation (the labor force participation gap), married and single women’s labor force participation (the marriage gap), and mothers’ and non-mother’s labor force participation (the motherhood gap). We show that gaps still exist in these spheres in many countries, though there is significant heterogeneity among countries in terms of the size of and the speed at which these gaps are changing. We also show the relationship between the gaps and ask how much the participation gap would be reduced if the gaps in other spheres were eliminated. In general, we show that while there seems to be a relationship between the decline of the education gap and the reduction of the other gaps, the link is rather weak and highly heterogeneous across countries

Biased Beliefs and Entry into Scientific Careers

We investigate whether excessively optimistic beliefs play a role in the persistent demand for doctoral and postdoctoral training in science. We elicit the beliefs and career preferences of doctoral students through a novel survey and randomize the provision of structured information on the true state of the academic market and information through role models on nonacademic careers. One year later, both treatments lead students to update their beliefs about the academic market and impact career preferences. However, we do not find an effect on actual career outcomes two years postintervention

How Do Nascent Social Entrepreneurs Respond to Rewards? A Field Experiment on Motivations in a Grant Competition

We conducted a field experiment to identify the causal effect of extrinsic reward cues on the sorting and performance of nascent social entrepreneurs. The experiment, carried out with one of the United Kingdom’s largest support agencies for social entrepreneurs, encouraged 431 nascent social entrepreneurs to submit a full application for a grant competition that provides cash and in-kind mentoring through a one-time mailing sent by the agency. The applicants were randomly assigned to one of three groups: one group received a standard mailing that emphasized the intrinsic incentives of the program, or the opportunity to do good (Social treatment), and the other two groups received a mailing that instead emphasized the extrinsic incentives - either the financial reward (Cash treatment) or the in-kind reward (Support treatment). Our results show that an emphasis on extrinsic incentives has a causal impact on sorting into the applicant pool: the extrinsic reward cues led fewer candidates to apply and “crowded out” the more prosocial candidates while “crowding in” the more money-oriented ones. The extrinsic reward cues also increased application effort, which led these candidates to be more successful in receiving the grant. Yet, the selection resulting from the extrinsic incentive cues led to worse performance at the end of the one-year grant period. Our results highlight the critical role of intrinsic motives in the selection and performance of social enterprises and suggest that using extrinsic incentives to promote the development of successful social enterprises may backfire in the longer run

It's Good to Be First: Order Bias in Reading and Citing NBER Working Papers

When choices are made from ordered lists, individuals can exhibit biases toward selecting certain options as a result of the ordering. We examine this phenomenon in the context of consumer response to the ordering of economics papers in an e-mail announcement issued by the NBER. We show that despite the effectively random list placement, papers listed first each week are about 30% more likely to be viewed, downloaded, and subsequently cited. We suggest that a model of “skimming” behavior, where individuals focus on the first few papers in the list due to time constraints, would be most consistent with our findings

Wage Ceilings and Floors: The Gender Gap in Ukraine's Transition

This paper uses new micro data from the Ukrainian Longitudinal Monitoring Survey (ULMS) to examine the gender gaps across the distribution of wages in Ukraine during communism (1986), the start of transition (1991), and after Ukraine started to be considered a market economy (2003). We find that the gender pay gap is higher in the top half of the distribution than at the bottom half and that this ‘glass ceiling’ is persistent across the three points in time, while the wage floor rose for women in 2003. Closer inspection of two sectors – the private and the public – reveals the striking finding that the glass ceiling is lower in the public than in the private sector but the floor is the same. We use the Machado and Mata (2004) method to create counterfactuals that advance our knowledge of which factors are driving these differences; we find that the differences in men’s and women’s rewards (βs) rather than differences in their productive characteristics (Xs) explain most of the wage gap throughout the distribution. The different ceilings in the public and private sectors are largely due to differences in men’s and women’s productive characteristics, which favor men in the public and women in the private sector. The fall in the gender gap in the lower part of the distribution from 1986 to 2003 is explained partially by the improvement in women’s productive characteristics and partially by the worsening in men’s rewards in the bottom half of the distribution over time. However, probably the most important reason for the reduction in the gap at the bottom of the distribution over time is that the value of the minimum wage was set relatively high in 2003 and it raised the wage floor for more women than men.http://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/39183/1/IPC-working-paper-011-GanguliTerrell.pd