Males and females are markedly different in their choice of college major. Two main reasons have been suggested for the gender gap: differences in innate abilities and differences in preferences. This paper addresses the question of how college majors are chosen, focusing on the underlying...

Could differences in risk attitudes explain parts of the gender wage gap? We present estimates on the association between labor market outcomes and financial risk-taking using individual level administrative data on individual wealth portfolios and wage rates. The individual's share of risky to...

This paper incorporates an explicit education signaling mechanism into a dynamic model of production and asks if "higher education as a signal" helps explain the simultaneous increase in the supply and price of skilled relative to unskilled labor, as is observed in the US since 1980. The key...

We use data from Spain to test for an effect of earnings risk and skewness on individual wages. We carry out separate estimation for men, women, public and private sector employees. In accordance with previous evidence for the US we show the existence of a risk-return trade-off across...

In this paper we test for risk compensation in wages using Danish panel data. With the conviction that the type of education is as important as the education length, we use a very detailed description of the type of education reached by the Danish population to calculate different measures of...

This study investigates whether the success of salary history bans could be limited by job-seekers volunteering their salaries unprompted. We survey American workers in 2019 and 2021 about their recent job searches, distinguishing when candidates were asked about salary history from when they...