Using a very large sample of matched author-referee pairs, we examine how the gender of referees and authors affects the former's recommendations. Relying on changing matches of authors and referees, we find no evidence of gender differences among referees in charitableness toward authors; nor...

We measure the impact of individuals' looks on their life satisfaction or happiness. Using five data sets from the U.S., Canada, the U.K., and Germany, we construct beauty measures in different ways that allow putting a lower bound on the true effects of beauty on happiness. Personal beauty...

We examine the timing of firms operations in a formal model of labor demand. Merging a variety of data sets from Portugal from 1995-2004, we describe temporal patterns of firms demand for labor and estimate production-functions and relative labor-demand equations. The results demonstrate the...

American workweeks are long compared to other rich countries'. Much less well-known is that Americans are more likely to work at night and on weekends. We examine the relationship between these two phenomena using the American Time Use Survey and time-diary data from 5 other countries. Adjusting...

Using CPS data from 1979-2009 we examine how cyclical downturns and industry-specific demand shocks affect wage differentials between white non-Hispanic men and women, Hispanics and non-Hispanic whites, and African-Americans and non-Hispanic whites. Women's relative earnings are harmed by...

Using several microeconomic data sets from the United States and the Netherlands, and the examples of height and beauty, this study examines whether: 1) Absolute or relative differences in a characteristic are what affect labor-market and other outcomes; and 2) The effects of a characteristic...

We use longitudinal data describing couples in Australia from 2001-12 and Germany from 2002-12 to examine how demographic events affect perceived time and financial stress. Consistent with the view of measures of stress as proxies for the Lagrangean multipliers in models of household production,...

We examine monthly variation in weekly work hours using data for 2003-10 from the Current Population Survey (CPS) on hours/worker, from the Current Employment Survey (CES) on hours/job, and from the American Time Use Survey (ATUS) on both. The ATUS data minimize recall difficulties and constrain...

How would people spend time if confronted by permanent declines in market work? We identify preferences off exogenous cuts in legislated standard hours that raised employers' overtime costs in Japan around 1990 and Korea in the early 2000s. Using time-diaries from before and after these shocks,...