In this study, we explore a new approach for analyzing changes in the gender pay gap that uses direct measures of job tasks and gives a comprehensive characterization of how work for men and women has changed in recent decades. Using data from West Germany, we find that women have witnessed relative increases in nonroutine analytic and interactive tasks. The most notable difference between the genders is, however, the pronounced relative decline in routine task inputs among women, driven, at least in part, by technological change. These changes explain a substantial fraction of the closing of the gender wage gap.

For years, college-educated women were limited mainly to lower-paying, female-dominated professions such as teaching and nursing. Over the past several decades, however, there has been a remarkable increase in the percentage of college-educated women in higher-paying, “traditionally male” professional occupations. In 1967, the fraction of college-educated women working in these occupations was less than 20 percent. By 1997, this number had increased to almost 40 percent. This increase is particularly striking when compared to the slightly declining trend among college-educated men. What can explain this increase in female professionals? There are a number of possible explanations. One explanation is a demand shift favoring women over men in these highly skilled occupations. While the notion of a “gender-specific” demand shift is compelling in the case of high-school-graduate men and women, who work in very different industries and occupations, the story is much less convincing for the college-educated group. Collegeeducated men and women work in more similar occupations and are presumably closer substitutes for each other. To the extent that they are different, the available evidence suggests that this may have worked to the disadvantage of women (see Francine Blau and Lawrence Kahn, 1997). Another explanation, and the one we focus on in this paper, is that college-educated women have responded to the rise in overall skill demand, a phenomenon which has characterized the U.S. labor market during the 1980’s and perhaps even as early as the 1970’s. An important margin of response for these women may have been labor-market participation. In 1970, less than 60 percent of college-educated women were working. The economy-wide rise in skill demand may have attracted educated women not only from other occupations, but from nonparticipation as well. Since virtually all college educated men work, labor-market participation is less likely to be a factor for men. While we postulate that the overall increase in skill demand played an important role, we are also aware that this is not the only explanation. Within these high-wage professional occupations, women’s wages rose relative to male wages even as women increased their share. This suggests to us that declining discrimination (which both made it easier for women to enter these occupations and resulted in wage convergence vis a vis the male workers) or unobserved skill upgrading also may have played a role. In addition, the spread of more effective birthcontrol devices, Roe v. Wade, and no-fault divorce laws, just to name a few of the factors which changed marriage and fertility patterns of women, also most likely contributed to women’s willingness and ability to invest in “career jobs” (see Claudia Goldin and Lawrence Katz, 2000).

In late 2003, Norway passed a law mandating 40% representation of each gender on the board of public limited liability companies. The primary objective of this reform was to increase the representation of women in top positions in the corporate sector and decrease the gender disparity in earnings within that sector. We document that the women appointed to these boards post-reform were observably more qualified than their female predecessors along many dimensions, and that the gender gap in earnings within boards fell substantially. However, we see no robust evidence that the reform benefited the larger set of women employed in the companies subject to the quota. Moreover, the reform had no clear impact on highly qualified women whose qualifications mirror those of board members but who were not appointed to boards. Finally, we find mixed support for the view that the reform affected the decisions of young women. While the reform was not accompanied by any change in female enrollment in business education programmes, we do see some improvements in labour market outcomes for young women with graduate business degrees in their early career stages; however, we observe similar improvements for young women with graduate science degrees, suggesting this may not be due to the reform. Overall, seven years after the board quota policy fully came into effect, we conclude that it had very little discernible impact on women in business beyond its direct effect on the women who made it into boardrooms.

Using data from a unique nationally representative sample of businesses, we examine the impact of workplace practices, information technology, and human capital investments on productivity. We estimate an augmented Cobb-Douglas production function with both cross section and panel data covering the period of 1987–1993, using both within and GMM estimators. We find that it is not whether an employer adopts a particular work practice but rather how that work practice is actually implemented within the establishment that is associated with higher productivity. Unionized establishments that have adopted human resource practices that promote joint decision making coupled with incentive-based compensation have higher productivity than other similar nonunion plants, whereas unionized businesses that maintain more traditional labor management relations have lower productivity. Finally, plant productivity is higher in businesses with more-educated workers or greater computer usage by nonmanagerial employees.

We investigate whether acquiring more primary education has long-term effects on risk-taking behavior in financial markets. Using exogenous variation in education from a compulsory schooling change combined with wealth data for the Swedish population, we estimate the effect of education on stock market participation and on the share of financial wealth invested in stocks, conditional on participation. For men, an extra year of education increases market participation by two percentage points and the share of financial wealth allocated to stocks by 10%. We find suggestive evidence that greater financial wealth is a potential channel through which education increases participation, consistent with the existence of fixed costs. Lower risk aversion is a potential channel through which education increases the stock share. The reform has less effect on female schooling attainment and there is no evidence that this additional education affects women’s asset allocation. There is no evidence of spillovers to children.

Until the middle of the 1970's, regulations constrained banks' ability to enter new markets. Over the subsequent 25 years, states gradually lifted these restrictions. This paper tests whether rents fostered by regulation were shared with labor, and whether firms were discriminating by sharing these rents disproportionately with male workers. We find that average compensation and average wages for banking employees fell after states deregulated. Male wages fell by about 12 percent after deregulation, whereas women's wages fell by only 3 percent, suggesting that rents were shared mainly with men. Women's share of employment in managerial positions also increased following deregulation.

The literature is divided on the expected effects of increased competition and consolidation in the financial sector on the supply of credit to relationship borrowers. This paper tests whether policy changes fostering competition and consolidation in U.S. banking helped or harmed entrepreneurs. We find that the rate of new incorporations increases following deregulation of branching restrictions, and that deregulation reduces the negative effect of concentration on new incorporations. We also find the formation of new incorporations increases as the share of small banks decreases, suggesting that diversification benefits of size outweigh the possible comparative advantage small banks may have in forging relationships.