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Title: Essays in Empirical Labor Economics
Citation Type: Dissertation/Thesis
Publication Year: 2010
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Abstract: This dissertation consists of three essays in empirical labor economics with a particular focus on women in the labor market. The first essay explores how the labor market responded to the entry of women into occupations and documents that the dynamics of occupational segregation are highly non-linear and exhibit "tipping"-like patterns. Using US Census data from 1910 to 2000, I show that the evolution of male share over time for occupations that experience a relatively large inflow of females shows striking evidence of an inverse-S pattern. Focusing on the 1940s through the 1980s, I find relatively strong evidence of discontinuities in male employment growth at candidate tipping points ranging from 30 to 60 percent female in white-collar occupations and 12 to 25 percent female in blue-collar occupations. Depending on the decade, occupations experience an 18 to 50 percentage point decline in net male employment growth at the candidate tipping points. The observed tipping behavior appears consistent with a simple framework based on Schelling's (1971) social interaction model where occupational tipping results from male preferences toward the fraction female in their occupation. Supporting the model's predictions, evidence from the General Social Survey indicates that tipping points are lower in regions where males hold more sexist attitudes toward the appropriate role of women. Alternative explanations such as omitted variables, changes in the production technology and learning fall short in explaining the full set of empirical observations. The second essay, co-authored with Kerwin Charles and Jonathan Guryan, examines the extent to which cross-market differences in women's relative labor market outcomes are determined by differences across markets in sexism defined as views about the appropriate role women should play in society. Using data from the General Social Survey (GSS) to measure sexism, we show that selection-corrected gender wage gaps and relative employment rates are significantly related to the degree of sexist views held by the median male, but not with male sexism at the 10th or 90th percentile. Consistent with a standard labor supply model in which sexism lowers women's offered wage, we find lower relative employment of women in more sexist markets is concentrated among women who would have worked few hours in sexisms absence. Finally, we show that the patterns described for male sexism . . .
Url: https://search.proquest.com/docview/607926304/abstract/EEA302B0B5924D0FPQ/1?accountid=14586
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Authors: Pan, Jessica Yunfen
Institution: The University of Chicago
Department: Business
Advisor: Bertrand, Marianne
Degree: Ph.D.
Publisher Location: Illinois
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Data Collections: IPUMS USA
Topics: Housing and Segregation, Migration and Immigration
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