Marriage and Misallocation: Evidence from 70 Years of U.S. History
The traditional expectation that married women should be homemakers precludes some married women from pursuing their comparative advantage in the labor market and discourages education. I quantify the aggregate economic consequences of gender norms in marriage, accounting for selection into education, marriage, and labor force participation. Relative to similar single women, married women of 1940 faced a norms wedge that acted as a 44% tax on market wage. By 2010, the norms wedge fell to 14%. Had norms remained at the level of 1940, the total market and home output of the current day would have been 5.5% lower.
(with Martina Zanella)
We study the dynamic responses of political parties to gender quotas in South Korean municipal councils, a setting with nearly zero women pre-quota. We exploit two unique institutional features: the quota intensity is discontinuous in council size; the quota regulates only one of two election arms. Political parties initially counteract the quota by nominating fewer women in the unregulated arm, but gradually reverse this response over time. Guided by a dynamic model of discrimination, we uncover statistical discrimination with incorrect beliefs about women’s competence as the main mechanism driving party behavior. The quota triggers learning through exposure to competent women.
Personnel is Policy (Implementation): Bureaucrats and the Korean Export Miracle
(with Philipp Barteska)
How much does the effect of industrial policy depend on the capacity of the bureaucrats implementing it? We exploit the rotation schedule of managers of South Korea’s export promotion offices in 87 countries between 1965 and 2000 to show that a one standard deviation increase in bureaucrat ability boosts exports by 37%, while the policy increases exports by 38% on average. Together, this implies the export promotion policy has no effect when implemented by a bureaucrat one standard deviation below average. Under higher-ability bureaucrats, South Korean exports respond more strongly to a country’s import demand, suggesting a more effective transmission of market information. We find that performance in the first appointment predicts whether a bureaucrat sees subsequent appointments, highlighting performance-based screening of bureaucrats as a mechanism that increases the policy’s effect.
Homemaker Norms for Married Women: A Cross-Country Comparison
The strength of the norm that prescribes married women to be homemakers varies across countries. This paper quantifies the homemaker norm for married women for seventeen countries. The homemaker norms wedge, calibrated based on the model proposed by Lee (2020), measures how much a 10-dollar market wage is valued at for married women, when they are deciding between working in the labor market versus working at home. The wedges are computed from the gap in the labor force participation of married women and that of similar single women that is not explained by the wage differentials. The homemaker norms wedge is found to be large, amounting to half of the parallel wedge that exists between men and women. If the homemaker norms wedges were to disappear, female labor force participation in the seventeen countries would increase by 21% on average. I show that cultural differences account for 45% of the cross-country variation in the homemaker norms wedge.
Group Composition and Group Decision-Making: Evidence from Municipal Council Meetings in South Korea
(with Minhyuk Nam and Martina Zanella)
How does the proportion of females affect the group dynamic in a male-dominated setting? We study this question in the context of municipal council meetings in South Korea, exploiting the introduction of gender quotas in the elections for councilors. The legal requirement for councils to publish verbatim minutes of council meetings gives us the unique opportunity to observe in a systematic manner how individuals interact. Identity economics as well as a vast literature in sociology make varied predictions of male and female behavior in male-dominated settings. For example, men may hold the view of women as threats, or they may gradually become more accepting of female colleagues. Women may cope by taking on masculine attitudes and distancing themselves from female colleagues, or they may develop solidarity among themselves. We intend to analyze the minutes of the council meetings, collected by scraping the websites of all 226 municipal councils, to see how the increase in the share of female councilors affected female and male MP behavior. Measures of behavior include frequency and length of speech, proposal and endorsement of new bills, and contention against and support for other councilors. This study may also shed light on the exact mechanisms behind existing findings of gender quotas in political positions leading to female-friendly policies, by zooming in on the legislative process.
Deciphering the Miracle on the Han: How South Korea Escaped Poverty and Transformed its Economy
(with Ignacio Banares-Sanchez, Oriana Bandiera, Robin Burgess, Tim Dobermann, Jeongkyung Won, and Hyunjoo Yang)