This paper estimates gender differences in access to informal information regarding the labor market. We conduct a large-scale field experiment in which real college students seek information from 10,000 working professionals about various career paths, and we randomize whether a professional...

How much does your neighbor impact your test scores and career? In this paper, we examine how an observable characteristic of same-age neighbors—their gender—affects a variety of high school and university outcomes. We exploit randomness in the gender composition of local cohorts at birth...

A key prediction of discrimination models is that competition in the labor market serves as a moderating force on employer discrimination. In the presence of market frictions, however, recessions create excess labor supply and thus generate opportunities to engage in discriminatory behaviors far...

This paper establishes the presence of a substantial gender gap in the relationship between state legislature service and the subsequent pursuit of a Congressional career. The empirical approach uses a sample of mixed-gender elections to compare the differential political career progression of...

We propose a management career model where females face a gender-specific career hurdle. We show that female managers will, on average, be more skilled than male managers, since females from the low end of the talent distribution will abstain from investing in a career as a manager. The average...

This paper investigates the effects of technological and organizational change (T&O) on jobs and workers. We show that although T&O reduces firm demand for routine relative to abstract task-based jobs, affected workers do not face higher probability of non-employment or lower earnings growth...

In standard promotion tournaments, contestants are ranked based on their output or productivity. We argue that workers’ career progression may also depend on their relative rankings in dimensions a priori unrelated to their job performance, such as visibility or in-person presence. Such...

We combine exogenous variation in union membership with detailed administrative data and a novel field survey to estimate the career effects of labor union membership. In the survey, we show how workers perceive the role of unions in setting wages and determining work amenities. In the...

This paper studies the cyclical behaviour of earnings risk and career changes. We document that the procyclical skewness of the earnings growth distribution arises mostly from the earnings changes of employer and occupation switchers. To uncover their relative importance in driving cyclical...