The City of Brotherly Love hosts this year’s ASSA Annual Meeting. Among the "over 13,300 of the best minds in economics" will be a quartet of GRAPE economists. Joanna Tyrowicz will present during the “Consequences of Gendered Labor Markets” paper session, while Oliwia Komada, Magda Smyk, and Lucas van der Velde will all participate in the AEA Poster Session. This year, GRAPE will discuss topics related to the gender wage gap, the effect of automation on different occupations, and the welfare effects of certain fiscal policies proposed in pension reform. All of us at GRAPE are very excited and honored to be able to share our research at the meeting :)

Joanna will discuss her paper “Estimating Gender Wage Gap in the Presence of Efficiency Wages -- Evidence from European Data”. The research, which Joanna co-authors alongside Katarzyna Bech, introduces an estimator of the gender wage gap, which accounts for bias stemming from a separation between privileged and standard labor markets when this separation is endogenous and a priori unknown (unobservable). The new estimator provides insightful results into how, without correction for the prevalence of efficiency wages, the estimates of the adjusted gender wage gaps tend to be substantially inflated in the majority market, and underestimated for the primary market.

Oliwia will present "Welfare effects of fiscal policy in reforming the pension system", a paper co-authored by Krzysztof Makarski and Joanna Tyrowicz that is part of the ongoing GRAPE research on how policy can make effective pension reform more effective. In order to ensure that fiscal policy proposed under pension reform does not negatively impact the welfare and childbearing decisions, the paper argues for the necessity of policy that smoothens the burden of pension reforms across cohorts, as well as a capital income tax. You can find Oliwia's poster below.

In Philadelphia, Magda Smyk will present not one but two papers, both dealing with gender issues in the workforce. Featured at the poster session will be Magda's "Gender Beliefs and Occupational Plans" paper, originally part of her Ph.D. Thesis. In the paper, she explores the role parents' gender beliefs have on the occupational decisions of their offspring. Magda will also present her paper with Joanna Tyrowicz, entitled "Pushed into necessity? Labor market inequality and entrepreneurship of disadvantaged group". The paper approaches the topic of female entrepreneurship through an economically rational prism, accounting for characteristics of the self-employment (necessity or opportunity driven) and gender inequality (wage and employment). The findings show that that when the gender gaps are larger, women are more likely to start their own firm, a decision they claim to be driven only by necessity.

Our delegation concludes with Lucas, who will presented his paper “Within occupation wage dispersion and the task content of jobs”. The paper is part of Lucas’ Preludium grant project, and looks at how wage dispersion within occupations correlates with the task content of the occupation. In the paper, Lucas is able to confirm his hypothesis that occupations with a greater share of non-routine tasks (those demanding more creativity) present greater dispersion than those with a greater share of routine tasks. The results show that automation has led to an increase in the share of non-routine tasks across occupations. Moreover, it had also caused a reduction in share of jobs that are routine intensive. Check out Lucas' poster below. The annual ASSA meeting runs from January 5th to January 7th. Stay tuned next week for first hand accounts of the conference from our presenters.

Oliwia

Magda

Lucas

Joanna