Knowledge that Transforms

Fewer women than men become executive managers. They earn less over their careers, hold more junior positions, and exit the occupation at a faster rate. We compiled a large panel data set on executives and formed a career hierarchy to analyze mobility and compensation. We find, controlling for executive rank and background, that women earn higher compensation than men, experience more income uncertainty, and are promoted more quickly. Among survivors, being female increases the chance of becoming chief executive officer. The unconditional gender pay gap and job-rank differences are primarily attributable to female executives exiting the occupation at higher rates than men.

We study ability peer effects in English secondary schools using data on four cohorts of students taking age-14 national tests and measuring peers’ ability by prior achievements at age 11. Our identification is based on within-pupil regressions exploiting variation in achievements across three compulsory subjects tested at age 14 and age 11. Using this novel strategy, we find significant and sizable negative effects arising from bad peers at the bottom of the ability distribution but little evidence that average peer quality and good peers matter. However, these results are heterogeneous, with girls benefiting from academically bright peers and boys not.

With the fall of the Berlin Wall, ethnic Germans living in eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union were given the opportunity to migrate to Germany. Within 15 years, 2.8 million individuals had done so. Upon arrival, these immigrants were exogenously allocated to different regions to ensure an even distribution across the country. Their inflow can therefore be seen as a quasi-experiment of immigration. I analyze the effect of these inflows on skill-specific employment rates and wages. The results indicate a displacement effect of 3.1 unemployed workers for every 10 immigrants that find a job, but no effect on relative wages.