Abstract This study uses a 15-year panel dataset of employees from a major French industrial firm to examine the impact of intra-firm, job-induced residential mobility on the gender pay gap among executives. The key finding is that women are less likely to move than men, but this accounts for only a small part of the gender pay gap. The estimates derived from event-study analysis indicate that residential mobility is associated with a significant and persistent benefit for both men and women, while career trajectories appear largely unaffected. When relocation does occur, the cumulative associated premium over a 6-year period is only approximately 5 per cent higher for males than for females. Oaxaca-Blinder decompositions show that the overall gender pay gap is driven mainly by premiums, allowances, and bonuses. Within the broader category of compensations, those specifically linked to residential mobility account for a relatively modest share.
Abstract The main financial stability concern surrounding the issuance of central bank digital currency (CBDC) is that it may encourage a shift of deposits away from commercial banks and, particularly during periods of stress, contribute to bank runs. A proposed policy response to such deposit outflows is so-called pass-through funding, whereby the central bank compensates banks for lost liabilities by extending credit to commercial banks. Drawing on a historical parallel, this paper shows that such a mechanism can generate unintended credit creation, thereby increasing rather than reducing financial instability. The analysis highlights the risks associated with CBDC issuance, not only through potential strains on central bank balance sheets but also through increased vulnerabilities within the banking sector.
Abstract We examine how different types of technological change—mechanization, computerization, and Artificial Intelligence (AI)—have shaped the nature and distribution of work over the century. We develop a general equilibrium (GE) model that distinguishes between labour-augmenting and labour-replacing technologies. We show how their sectoral and skill-specific features influence employment patterns, structural transformation, and inequality. Mechanization complemented manual labour and expanded manufacturing employment. Computerization replaced routine manual tasks while augmenting service sector jobs. AI represents a qualitatively different wave of automation, substituting for non-routine cognitive tasks and threatening high-skill office jobs. Our framework integrates classical trade theory with task-based approaches and emphasizes GE effects of technology. We highlight how the employment impact of automation depends not only on substitution at the task level but also on the macroeconomic reallocation of labour across sectors. This stylized model offers a unified lens to understand historical labour market shifts and future challenges posed by AI-driven change.
A fundamental challenge in principal-agent relationships is ensuring agents exert effort when their actions are not perfectly observable. We examine a natural experiment in effort enforcement in British horseracing, where jockeys are required not only to try to win but to be visibly seen to be trying. Jockeys who appear not to be trying face suspensions and significant penalties in terms of income forgone. Using a dataset of some 60,000 races involving more than 1,500 jockeys and 17,000 horses, we test whether these apparent non-trying events represent attempts to fix a race or influence future races. We find no evidence to support either hypothesis. Performance neither improves in the races before, nor deteriorates in the races after, a ban. Punishments for non-trying may nonetheless be rational as a deterrence mechanism-making an example of a small number of jockeys serves as a motivation for the rest: pour encourager les autres.
This paper adds to the scant literature that empirically studies the cyclicality of on-the-job search by using data from the Dutch National Bank Household Survey, a large longitudinal household panel, as well as from the OECD and Eurostat for the years 1993 to 2018. Overall, aggregate on-the-job search intensity is counter-cyclical, despite most models predicting pro-cyclical behaviour, while the likelihood that employed workers search on the job is largely a-cyclical. Workers with short tenure are more likely to search on-the-job and search more intensely in downturns. Furthermore, survey evidence on workers' self-reported reasons for searching shows that in downturns, workers are more likely to search because they fear losing their jobs.
