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Selection, Heterogeneity and
the Gender Wage Gap [paper]
Abstract: Usual estimates of
the female-male wage gap may be biased because female selection
could be different in different parts of the labor market. This
paper proposes an estimator for the wage gap in models with
unobserved heterogeneity in the selection rule. It applies to the
subpopulation of ``always employed'' women, which is similar to men
in labor force attachment. Using CPS data from 1976 to 2005, I show
that the gap has narrowed substantially from a -.521 to a -.263 log
wage points. In the presence of heterogeneity, focusing on the
proposed estimator is less distorting than usual selection
corrections.
Marriage and Emancipation in
the Age of the Pill (with Lena Edlund)
[paper]
Abstract: Women’s economic emancipation
arguably took off in the late 1960s and early 1970s. While
ubiquitous, its origins are not well understood. In an influential
paper, Goldin and Katz [2002] pointed to the role of unmarried
women’s access to the oral contraceptive (the Pill), ushered in by
the extension of legal rights to "mature minors" in the
late 1960s early 1970s. However, the Pill was FDA approved already
in 1960, and many states allowed a minor to marry, thereby
emancipating her with respect to medical treatment, including the
Pill. By the mid-1970s, the minimum marriage age had been lowered
to 18 in almost all states. Exploiting changes in the legal rights
of young adults by state, we find evidence that the Pill made early
marriage more attractive and facilitated women’s educational and
occupational attainments. Marriage combined with the Pill, we
speculate, may have provided women with the means to pursue higher
education at a time of limited student aid and ability to borrow
against future earnings.
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Instrumental Variables and the
Sign of the Average Treatment Effect (with Azeem Shaikh and Edward
Vytlacil) [available upon request]
Abstract: We establish
conditions under which one can use linear instrumental variables to
infer the sign of the Average Treatment Effect without imposing a
linear model with constant coefficients. We consider alternative
sets of conditions that impose monotonicity either on the outcome
equation, the equation for the endogenous regressor, or both. As a
byproduct of our analysis, we show testable restrictions on the
probability limit of IV implied by the alternative monotonicity
conditions. In order to obtain simple closed form results and for
ease of exposition, we consider the case of a binary outcome
variable, binary endogenous regressor, and binary instrument.
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