In the name of the Father: marriage and intergenerational mobility in the United States, 1850-1930

This paper constructs a continuous and consistent measure of intergenerational mobility in the United States between 1850 and 1930 by linking individuals with the same first name across pairs of decennial Censuses. One of the advantages of this methodology is that it allows to calculate intergenerational correlations not only between fathers and sons, but also between fathers-in-law and sons-in-law, something that is typically not possible with historical data. Thus, the paper sheds light on the role of marriage in the intergenerational transmis- sion of economic status from a historical perspective. We find that the father-son correlation in economic status grows throughout the period, but is consistently lower than the correlation between fathers-in-law and sons-in-law. The gap declines over time, and seems to have closed by the end of the period. We present a simple model of investment in human capital, marital sorting and intergenerational mobility that can rationalize the ?ndings

The effect of female leadership on establishment and employee outcomes: evidence from linked employer-employee data

In this paper we use a large linked employer-employee data set on German establishments between 1993 and 2012 to investigate how the gender composition of the top layer of management affects a variety of establishment and worker outcomes. We use two different measures to identify the gender composition of the top layer based on direct survey data: the fraction of women among top managers, and the fraction of women among working proprietors. We document the following facts: a) There is a strong negative association between the fraction of women in the top layer of management and several establishment outcomes, among them business volume, investment, total wage bill per worker, total employment, and turnover; b) Establishments with a high fraction of women in the top layer of management are more likely to implement female-friendly policies, such as providing childcare facilities or promoting and mentoring female junior staff; c) The fraction of women in the top layer of management is also negatively associated with employment and wages, both male and female, full-time and part-time. However, all of these associations vanish when we include establishment fixed effects and establishment-specific time trends. This reveals a substantial sorting of female managers across establishments: small and less productive establishments that invest less, pay their employees lower wages, but are more female-friendly are more likely to be led by women

Gender differences in cooperative environments? Evidence from the U.S. Congress

This paper uses data on bill sponsorship and cosponsorship in the U.S. House of Representatives to estimate gender differences in cooperative behavior. We employ a number of econometric methodologies to address the potential selection of female representatives into electoral districts with distinct preferences for cooperativeness, including regression discontinuity and matching. After accounting for selection, we find that among Democrats there is no significant gender gap in the number of cosponsors recruited, but women-sponsored bills tend to have fewer cosponsors from the opposite party. On the other hand, we find robust evidence that Republican women recruit more cosponsors and attract more bipartisan support on the bills that they sponsor. This is particularly true on bills that address issues more relevant for women, over which female Republicans have possibly preferences that are closer to those of Democrats. We interpret these results as evidence that cooperation is mostly driven by a commonality of interest, rather than gender per se

In the name of the son (and the daughter): intergenerational mobility in the United States, 1850-1940

This paper estimates historical intergenerational elasticities between fathers and children of both sexes in the United States using a novel empirical strategy. The key insight of our approach is that the information about socioeconomic status conveyed by first names can be used to create pseudo-links across generations. We find that both father-son and father-daughter elasticities were flat during the nineteenth century, increased sharply between 1900 and 1920, and declined slightly thereafter. We discuss the role of regional disparities in economic development, trends in inequality and returns to human capital, and the marriage market in explaining these patterns

Job Search and Impatience

How does impatience affect job search? More impatient workers search less intensively and set a lower reservation wage. The effect on the exit rate from unemployment is unclear. In this paper we show that, if agents have exponential time preferences, the reservation wage effect dominates for sufficiently patient individuals, so increases in impatience lead to higher exit rates. The opposite is true for agents with hyperbolic time preferences: more impatient workers search less and exit unemployment later. Using two large longitudinal data sets, we find that various measures of impatience are negatively correlated with search effort and the exit rate from unemployment, and are orthogonal to reservation wages. Overall, impatience has a large effect on job search outcomes in the direction predicted by the hyperbolic discounting model.

Do high-skill immigrants raise productivity? Evidence from Israeli manufacturing firms, 1990-1999

This paper exploits the episode provided by the mass migration from the former Soviet Union to Israel in the 1990s to study the effect high skill immigration on productivity. Using a unique data set on manufacturing firms, I investigate directly whether firms and industries with a higher concentration of immigrants experienced increases in productivity. The analysis finds no correlation between immigrant concentration and productivity at the firm level in cross-sectional and pooled regressions. First-differences estimates reveal, if anything, a negative correlation between the change in output per worker and the change in the immigrant share. The immigrant share was strongly negatively correlated with productivity in low-tech industries. In high-technology industries, the results point to a positive relationship, hinting at complementarities between technology and the skilled immigrant workforce

Using the two-period model to understand investment in human capital

In many textbooks, the decision to invest in human capital is presented in terms of the present discounted value of the lifetime stream of costs and benefits associated with the investment. I argue that this approach, while delivering some useful insights, also conflates subjective discount rates and market interest rates, obfuscates the role of credit market imperfections, and makes difficult the analysis of policy interventions and the effects of external shocks on human capital investment. I show instead how a simple two-period model can deliver the main insights about investment in human capital and is flexible enough to be used to model a wide variety of policy interventions

Bayesian inference for duration data with unobserved and unknown heterogeneity: Monte Carlo evidence and an application

This paper describes a semiparametric Bayesian method for analyzing duration data. The proposed estimator specifies a complete functional form for duration spells, but allows flexibility by introducing an individual heterogeneity term, which follows a Dirichlet mixture distribution. I show how to obtain predictive distributions for duration data that correctly account for the uncertainty present in the model. I also directly compare the performance of the proposed estimator with Heckman and Singer's (1984) Non Parametric Maximum Likelihood Estimator (NPMLE). The methodology is applied to the analysis of youth unemployment spells. Compared to the NPMLE, the proposed estimator reflects more accurately the uncertainty surrounding the heterogeneity distribution

Three-generation mobility in the United States, 1850-1940: the role of maternal and paternal grandparents

This paper estimates intergenerational elasticities across three generations in the United States in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, exploring how maternal and paternal grandfathers predict the economic status of their grandsons and granddaughters. We document that the relationship between the income of grandparents and grandchildren differs by gender. The socio-economic status of grandsons is more strongly associated with the status of paternal grandfathers than maternal grandfathers. The status of maternal grandfathers is more strongly correlated with the status of granddaughters than grandsons, while the opposite is true for paternal grandfathers. We argue that the findings can be rationalized by a model of gender-specific intergenerational transmission of traits and imperfect assortative mating.Accepted manuscrip

Job Search and Hyperbolic Discounting: Structural Estimation and Policy Evaluation

Job search is an unpleasant activity with immediate costs and delayed benefits. The tension between long-run goals and short-run impulses may lead unemployed workers to postpone repeatedly tasks necessary to find a job. In standard economic models, agents are assumed to be time-consistent, so that a contrast between short-run and long-run preferences never arises. However, a growing literature has challenged the conventional view, and allows agents to be time inconsistent by modeling their discount function as hyperbolic (as opposed to the standard assumption of exponential discounting). Agents with hyperbolic discount functions exhibit a high degree of discounting in the short run, but a relatively low degree of discounting in the long run. Therefore, hyperbolic agents are likely to delay tasks with immediate costs and delayed benefits, whereas they would choose to perform the same task if both costs and benefits were to occur in the future. This paper estimates the structural parameters of a job search model with hyperbolic discounting and endogenous search effort. It estimates quantitatively the degree of hyperbolic discounting, and assesses its implications for the impact of various policy interventions aimed at reducing unemployment. The model is estimated using data on unemployment spells and accepted wages from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (NLSY). The likelihood function explicitly incorporates all the restrictions implied by the optimal dynamic programming solution to the model, and also accounts for both observed and unobserved heterogeneity. The parameters of the hyperbolic discount function are separately identified because different forms of discounting have contrasting effects on the different components of the job search process. The results point to a substantial degree of hyperbolic discounting, especially for low and medium wage workers. The structural estimates are also used to evaluate alternative policy interventions for the unemployed: a cut in unemployment benefits, a job search assistance program, monitoring search effort, monitoring the job acceptance strategy, and a re-employment bonus. I find that ignoring hyperbolic preferences may lead one to incorrect inferences on the effects of these interventions.Job Search; Hyperbolic Discounting; Structural Estimation