Research
Research
Approaches to learn about employer learning, with Fabian Lange, 2023, Canadian Journal of Economics/Revue canadienne d'économique, Volume 56, Issue 2, Pages: 343-356.
Did the pandemic and labour shortages affect job quality?, with Fabian Lange, Luc Bissonnette, and Jacob Hazen, 2024, Future Skill Centre.
Dynamics of Gender Wage Gap: Quantifying the Role of Changes in Firm-Specific Wage Premiums. (Job Market Paper)
Awarded Canadian Labour Economics Forum (CLEF) Best Paper Prize (runner-up)
Abstract: Firm wage premiums change over time. These changes may exacerbate gender earnings inequality if women are less likely to sort into firms with increasing wage premiums, or if they tend to capture a smaller share of wage increases. Using linked employer-employee data from Canada spanning 2001 to 2019, I estimate a two-way fixed effects model that allows for gender-specific and time-varying firm wage premiums. Firms expand employment of both men and women when their wage premiums increase. However, the wage gains women achieve through reallocation across firms with rising wage premiums are only about 67% of those achieved by men under similar conditions, offsetting approximately 24.3% of the progress in narrowing the gender earnings gap. I then quantify the two main factors driving these differentials: (i) sorting effect and (ii) pay-setting effect. I find that women are less likely to sort into firms with rising wage premiums and tend to capture a significantly smaller share of these wage gains compared to men. The sorting effect accounts for approximately 12% of the differential, while the pay-setting effect explains the remaining 88%. Both sorting and pay-setting differentials are particularly pronounced among younger workers. These disparities are closely tied to gender differences in the responses of wage premiums and employment to changes in productivity over time.
The Flattening of the Ability-Experience Profile in Recent Decades: The Role of Occupational Sorting
Abstract: This paper investigates the role of occupational sorting in the declining life-cycle returns to cognitive ability—measured by AFQT scores—since the early 2000s. Using data from the NLSY79 and NLSY97 cohorts, I show that among less-educated workers, the ability–experience profile has markedly flattened: initial returns remain low and exhibit limited growth. In contrast, recent cohorts of college-educated workers begin with lower initial returns than their predecessors but experience steeper gains over time. These cohort differences are primarily driven by changes in occupational sorting rather than within-occupation wage dynamics. Less-educated workers in recent cohorts are increasingly concentrated in lower-return occupations and face reduced upward mobility, while more-educated workers start in lower-return jobs but see faster growth in their ability premium. Using Census and American Community Survey data from 1980–2017, I show that these patterns align with a reversal in demand for cognitive tasks around the 2000s. This shift led highly educated workers to move down the occupational ladder and crowd into routine cognitive occupations. As a result, less-educated workers were displaced from these positions, which had traditionally offered relatively higher returns to their abilities. This paper underscores the central role of occupational sorting in shaping—and flattening—life-cycle returns to ability since the 2000s.
Returns to Apprenticeship Trades in Canada, with Fernando Saltiel.
Workplace Heterogeneity and Changes in Earnings Inequality in Canada.
Examining Disparities Among Displaced Workers: How They Widen the Gender Wage Gap, with Olivier Gagnon.