Policymakers often promote the importance of STEM jobs but are concerned about the underrepresentation of women and minorities in these jobs. However, there is no agreed-upon definition of STEM jobs. I use occupation task data from O*Net to analyze the STEM task content of occupations, drawing...

We analyze the early labor market outcomes of U.S. college graduates from the classes of 1974 to 2011, as a function of the economic conditions into which they graduated. We have three main findings. First, poor labor market conditions substantially disrupt early careers. A large recession at...

Expected earnings matter for college major choices, and majors differ in both their average earnings and the age profile of their earnings. We show that students’ family background is strongly related to the earnings paths of the major they choose. Students with more educated parents,...

More than two-thirds of STEM jobs are held by men. This paper provides a detailed analysis of the STEM pipeline from high school to mid-career in the United States, decomposing the gender gap in STEM into six stages. By far the most important stages are the initial college major choice and the...

Aversion to "stigma" - disutility associated with a program or activity due to beliefs about how it is perceived - may affect labor market choices and utilization of social programs, but empirical evidence of its importance is scarce. Using two randomized field experiments, we show that stigma...

We study discrimination in hiring and its associated outcomes for the discriminators using a unique survey of Egyptian businesses. Discrimination against women is widespread and overt: about half (51%) of establishments directly admit that they prefer to hire men. The share varies widely across...

Identifying the impacts of liquidity shocks on spending decisions is difficult methodologically but important for theory, practice, and policy. Using seven different methods on microenterprise loan applicants, we find striking results. Borrowers report uses of loan proceeds strategically, and...

Changes in transport costs can affect mobility in ways that differ across the population, affecting the impacts of transport policies. We randomly assign large price reductions on Uber in Egypt over a 3-month period and collect comprehensive data on participant mobility using Google Timeline. A...