We develop a model of partnership and marriage based upon individual abilities and match-specific returns. A theoretical result is that marriage and same-sex partnership positively select more able individuals, while the effect of unmarried heterosexual partnership is ambiguous. We conduct empirical analysis with a unique new data source on marital status, partnership and sexual orientation of ...

This paper uses exceptionally rich data on Swedish corporate executives and their personal characteristics to study gender gaps in CEO appointments and pay. Both gaps are sizeable: 18% for CEO appointments and 27% for pay. At most one-eight of the gaps can be attributed to observable gender differences in executives’ and their firms’ characteristics. Further tests suggest that unobservable gend...

The existence of a beauty premium in the labor market and the male–female wage gap suggests that appearance can matter in the real world. We explore beauty and gender in a public goods experiment and find similar effects. We find a beauty premium, even though beautiful people contribute, on average, no more or less than others. The beauty premium, however, disappears when we provide information...

Although there are numerous studies of the dowry phenomenon in India, research pertaining to the custom in the rest of South Asia is sparse. The aim of this paper is to study dowry payments in Pakistan. Several interpretations for dowry are distinguished using a simple theoretical framework and the predictions of this model are tested using recent data from Pakistan. The investigation concludes...

We study behavioral differences across and within genders in a family of ultimatum and dictator games. We find these differences are due not only to altruistic preferences but also beliefs about the strategic behavior of others. The behavior of men in strategic situations is not significantly more aggressive than women on average. But this average masks wide variation in intra-gender behavior. ...

We consider the response to incentives as an explanation for observed productivity differences within a firm that paid its workers piece rates. We provide a framework within which the observed productivity differences can be decomposed into two parts: One due to differences in ability and the other due to differences in the response to incentives. We apply this decomposition to male and female ...

This paper offers a theoretical and empirical analysis on the sources of the narrowing gender gap in wages. Based on some existing literature, the model posits that the narrowing gender gap may be related to women’s changing comparative advantage and the gender gap is smaller in occupations in which physical labor is less intensively used. The model implies that when an economy transforms from ...

A longstanding tradition of patrilocal marriage – living with the parents-in-law affects every generation of Central Asian women and their choices regarding childbearing, employment and education. While anthropological evidence suggests that elder matriarchs (Queen Bees) play a key and often detrimental role in the lives of the junior women in their households, rigorous empirical studies are sc...

Effects of Sexual Preferences on Earnings in the Netherlands A small literature suggests that bisexual and homosexual workers earn less than their heterosexual fellow workers and that a discriminating labor market is partly to blame. In this paper we examine whether sexual preferences affect earnings in the beginning of working careers in the Netherlands. We find (i) that young and highly educa...

Gender Wage-Productivity Differentials and Global Integration in China In the absence of discrimination, there should be no wage-productivity differentials as relative wages should be equal to the relative marginal productivity levels of workers. This paper investigates the role of globalization on the structure and evolution of gender differentials in China by simultaneously estimating demand-...