Browsing HKS Faculty Scholarship by Keyword "Labor Economics"

Now showing items 1-14 of 14

    • Are Bilateral Remittances Countercyclical? 

      Frankel, Jeffrey A. (John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University, 2010)
      By putting together a relatively large data set on bilateral remittances of emigrants, this paper is able to shed light on the important hypothesis of smoothing. The smoothing hypothesis is that remittances are countercyclical ...

    • The Availability and Utilization of 401(k) Loans 

      Beshears, John Leonard; Choi, James J; Laibson, David I.; Madrian, Brigitte (John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University, 2011)
      We document the loan provisions in 401(k) savings plans and how participants use 401(k) loans. Although only about 22% of savings plan participants who are allowed to borrow from their 401(k) have such a loan at any given ...

    • Behavioral Economics Perspectives on Public Sector Pension Plans 

      Beshears, John Leonard; Choi, James J.; Laibson, David I.; Madrian, Brigitte (John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University, 2011)
      We describe the pension plan features of the states and the largest cities and counties in the U.S. Unlike in the private sector, defined benefit (DB) pensions are still the norm in the public sector. However, a few ...

    • Closing the Gender Gap in Education: Does it Foretell the Closing of the Employment, Marriage, and Motherhood Gaps? 

      Ganguli Prokopovych, Ina; Hausmann, Ricardo; Viarengo, Martina (John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University, 2011)
      In this paper we examine several dimensions of gender disparity for a sample of 40 countries using micro-level data. We start by documenting the reversal of the gender education gap and ranking countries by the year in ...

    • The Collapse of the Soviet Union and the Productivity of American Mathematicians 

      Borjas, George J.; Doran, Kirk (John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University, 2012)
      It has been difficult to open up the black box of knowledge production. We use unique international data on the publications, citations, and affiliations of mathematicians to examine the impact of a large post-1992 influx ...

    • Do Rising Top Incomes Lift All Boats? 

      Andrews, Daniel; Jencks, Christopher; Leigh, Andrew (2009)
      Pooling data for 1905 to 2000, we find no systematic relationship between top income shares and economic growth in a panel of 12 developed nations observed for between 22 and 85 years. After 1960, however, a one percentage ...

    • The Drawdown of Personal Retirement Assets 

      Poterba, James M.; Venti, Steven F.; Wise, David Alsgaard (John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University, 2011)
      How households draw down the balances that they accumulate in retirement saving accounts such as 401(k) plans and Individual Retirement Accounts can have an important effect on the contribution of these accounts to retirement ...

    • The Dynamics of Capitalism 

      Scherer, Frederic Michael (John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University, 2010)
      This paper, written for a larger compendium edited by Dennis Mueller, examines key dynamic features of capitalistic economies and how prominent economists such as Schumpeter, Marx, Keynes, and von Mises perceived them. The ...

    • Female Employment and Fertility in Rural China 

      Fang, Hai; Eggleston, Karen N.; Rizzo, John A.; Zeckhauser, Richard Jay (John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University, 2010)
      Data on 2,288 married women from the 2006 China Health and Nutrition Survey are deployed to study how off-farm female employment affects fertility. Such employment reduces a married woman’s actual number of children by ...

    • Labor Supply Responses to Marginal Social Security Benefits: Evidence from Discontinuities 

      Liebman, Jeffrey B.; Luttmer, Erzo F.P.; Seif, David G. (John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University, 2009)
      A key question for Social Security reform is whether workers currently perceive the link on the margin between the Social Security taxes they pay and the Social Security benefits they will receive. We estimate the effects ...

    • The Online Laboratory: Conducting Experiments in a Real Labor Market 

      Horton, John Joseph; Rand, David Gertler; Zeckhauser, Richard Jay (John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University, 2010)
      Online labor markets have great potential as platforms for conducting experiments, as they provide immediate access to a large and diverse subject pool and allow researchers to conduct randomized controlled trials. We argue ...

    • The Place Premium: Wage Differences for Identical Workers Across the US Border 

      Clemens, Michael A.; Montenegro, Claudio E.; Pritchett, Lant (2009)
      We estimate the “place premium”—the wage gain that accrues to foreign workers who arrive to work in the United States. First, we estimate the predicted, purchasing-power adjusted wages of people inside and outside the ...

    • “Schooling Can’t Buy Me Love”: Marriage, Work, and the Gender Education Gap in Latin America 

      Ganguli, Ina; Hausmann, Ricardo; Viarengo, Martina (John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University, 2010)
      In this paper we establish six stylized facts related to marriage and work in Latin America and present a simple model to account for them. First, skilled women are less likely to be married than unskilled women. Second, ...

    • Why do Arab States Lag the World in Gender Equality? 

      Norris, Pippa (2009)
      Why do Arab states lag behind the rest of the world in gender equality? Social structural, cultural, and institutional accounts offer alternative perspectives. This study critiques the ‘petroleum patriarchy’ thesis, presented ...