Using rich data on graduate tenure-track faculty, we explore the gender pay gap in academic departments of economics and agricultural/applied economics and the differences between them. We find that the gender pay gaps in economics and agricultural/applied economics are 8.3% and 4.1%, respectively, controlling for faculty rank, experience, and university affiliation. The gender pay gap increases with rank and varies across institutions. Productivity is an important determinant of wages but it explains little of the gender pay gap. While the lower unexplained gap in agricultural/applied economics is laudable, a greater share of women who are assistant and associate professors is part of the explanation. Given institutional differences, we explore the extent to which institutional factors—differences in the returns to observed characteristics, such as rank; unobserved characteristics; and institutional differences in pay levels—contribute to the gender pay gap.

Using rich data on graduate tenure-track faculty, we explore the gender pay gap in academic departments of economics and agricultural/applied economics and the differences between them. We find that the gender pay gaps in economics and agricultural/applied economics are 8.3% and 4.1%, respectively, controlling for faculty rank, experience, and university affiliation. The gender pay gap increases with rank and varies across institutions. Productivity is an important determinant of wages but it explains little of the gender pay gap. While the lower unexplained gap in agricultural/applied economics is laudable, a greater share of women who are assistant and associate professors is part of the explanation. Given institutional differences, we explore the extent to which institutional factors-differences in the returns to observed characteristics, such as rank; unobserved characteristics; and institutional differences in pay levels-contribute to the gender pay gap.

We conduct a randomized control trial to assess the efficacy of utilizing modified introductory language in student evaluations of instruction to mitigate implicit bias. Students are randomly assigned within courses to three treatment arms and shown so-called "cheap talk" scripts referencing implicit bias, the high stakes associated with student evaluations, and the combination of the two. We analyze both the impact assignment of the treatment has on completion rates as well as the effect on average instructor rating. Our analysis indicates assignment has statistically significant effects on the likelihood of response for those assigned the combined treatment, though the effects are heterogeneous with respect to both instructor and student race/ethnicity and gender. We further find the high-stakes treatment leads to higher average scores for racial/ethnic minority instructors with no significant effects from the implicit bias and combined scripts.

Anthropogenic environmental changes are having complex effects on all aspects of the hydrological cycle. In estuarine areas, these factors are coalescing to increase saline contamination. Between 2006 and 2007, coastal Bangladesh experienced a sudden and dramatic increase in water salinity, with the saline front shifting inland by roughly 20km. We use this exceptional event to explore the impact of salinity on economic activity and agricultural production. Our results indicate that locations that experienced a sudden increase in water salinity incurred a 33% reduction in economic activity, as measured by nightlight intensity. This coincides with a decline in the cultivation of high-yielding rice varieties, which are not salt tolerant, as well as the removal of land from production. There is no robust evidence that changes in population drove these losses in economic activity. While sea level rise may be only one factor in this shift of the salinity front, our findings suggest that the future impacts of sea level rise have the potential to be quite large and may not be limited to coastline locations.

To date, projections of human migration induced by sea-level change (SLC) largely suggest large-scale displacement away from vulnerable coastlines. However, results from our model of Bangladesh suggest counterintuitively that people will continue to migrate toward the vulnerable coastline irrespective of the flooding amplified by future SLC under all emissions scenarios until the end of this century. We developed an empirically calibrated agent-based model of household migration decision-making that captures the multi-faceted push, pull and mooring influences on migration at a household scale. We then exposed ~4800 000 simulated migrants to 871 scenarios of projected 21st-century coastal flooding under future emissions pathways. Our model does not predict flooding impacts great enough to drive populations away from coastlines in any of the scenarios. One reason is that while flooding does accelerate a transition from agricultural to non-agricultural income opportunities, livelihood alternatives are most abundant in coastal cities. At the same time, some coastal populations are unable to migrate, as flood losses accumulate and reduce the set of livelihood alternatives (so-called 'trapped' populations). However, even when we increased access to credit, a commonly-proposed policy lever for incentivizing migration in the face of climate risk, we found that the number of immobile agents actually rose. These findings imply that instead of a straightforward relationship between displacement and migration, projections need to consider the multiple constraints on, and preferences for, mobility. Our model demonstrates that decision-makers seeking to affect migration outcomes around SLC would do well to consider individual-level adaptive behaviors and motivations that evolve through time, as well as the potential for unintended behavioral responses.

A growing demographic literature has examined the impacts of climatic variability on human populations. Most of this work has focused on migration, morbidity, and mortality. Much less attention has been given to the effects of climate change on fertility, which represents an important gap given many plausible reasons to expect such effects. We address this issue by examining the relationship between exposure to flooding and fertility in Bangladesh. We link birth records (n=355,532 person-years) from the Demographic and Health Survey (DHS) with satellite-derived measures of flooding from 2002 through 2014 and estimate statistical models of the relationship between flood exposure and subsequent fertility outcomes. We also conduct secondary analyses of the relationship between flood exposure and four expected causal pathways: women’s marriage, contraceptive use, employment, and health. Results suggest that flood exposure reduces the probability of childbearing, and that this effect operates with a two-year lag. Negative effects are concentrated among women with a primary school education or higher and low-parity women. In contrast, women at high parities (e.g., at or above four) tend to increase their fertility in response to flooding. We find little evidence that observed flooding effects operate through the causal pathways we test, raising questions for future research about the mechanisms that explain our findings.

Minimizing the adverse consequences of sea-level change presents a key societal challenge. New modelling is necessary to examine the implications of global policy decisions that determine future greenhouse gas emissions and local policies around coastal risk that influence where and how we live.

We utilize human resources data from The Ohio State University to assess the gender wage gap. We find a persistent gap of 11% among regular, tenure-track faculty after accounting for fiscal year, race, clinical appointments, experience, and department. While the presence of a statistically significant gender wage gap is robust, the magnitude of the gap varies substantially depending on how the sample of interest is defined. In assessing gender wage gaps, researchers and universities must be attentive to issues of attrition and classification. Transparency regarding how estimates are affected by sample exclusions and variable definitions will yield insight into possible sources of gender bias.

The migrant selection literature concentrates primarily on spatial patterns. This paper illustrates the implications of migration duration for patterns of selection by integrating two workhorses of the labor literature, a search model and a Roy model. Theory and empirics show temporary migrants are intermediately selected on education, with weaker selection on cognitive ability. Longer migration episodes lead to stronger positive selection on both education and ability, as its associated jobs involve finer employee-employer matching and offer greater returns to experience. Networks are more valuable for permanent migration, where search costs are higher. Labor market frictions explain observed complex network-skill interactions.

As climate change threatens livelihoods in Bangladesh, migration to neighboring countries in South Asia may accelerate. We use multiple types of data to predict how changes in the environment affect cross-border migration. Nationally representative migration data are combined with remote-sensing measures of flooding and rainfall and in situ measures of monsoon onset, temperature, radiation, and soil salinity to characterize environmental migration patterns. We further evaluate which groups are more susceptible to cross-border migration to examine how environmental factors shape the demographic composition of the country. We find migration to neighboring countries declines with short-term, adverse weather but increases with soil salinity. The soil salinity effect remains particularly persistent among poorer households. Investments targeting risks faced by the poor and non-poor remain crucial, as retention of the earnings skills, and experience of the latter enhances national resilience.

Internal migration has the potential to substantially increase incomes, especially for the poor in developing countries, and yet migration rates remain low. We explore the role of mental health by evaluating the impacts of internal migration on a suite of well-being indicators using a unique longitudinal study in rural Pakistan which surveyed individuals in 1991 and again in 2013 14. We account for selection into migration using covariate matching. Those who migrated during this period have roughly 35 to 40 percent higher consumption per adult equivalent, yet they are 6 percentage points less likely to report being in excellent health, 5 to 7 percentage points more likely to report having been sick in the last four weeks, and 12 to 14 percentage points less likely to report feeling either happy or calm. Our results suggest that deteriorating physical health coupled with feelings of relative deprivation underlie the disparity between economic and mental well-being. Thus, despite substantial monetary gains from migration, people may be happier and less mentally distressed remaining at home. If traditional market mechanisms cannot reduce psychic costs, it may be more constructive to address regional inequality by shifting production rather than workers across space. Acknowledgement :

The impact of credit has been widely studied, and yet little is known about the effect of formal versus informal loans. In this paper, we contrast the two and their impact on children's schooling using longitudinal data from Nicaragua. To address endogeneity, we utilize both household fixed effects and locality-year fixed effects. Our results indicate that, on average, children from borrowing households fare worse than children from nonborrowing households, with male borrowers having a disproportionately negative effect on boys, and vice versa for girls and female borrowers. Informal credit is found to have a protective effect on school attendance, but the effects of formal and informal credit on cumulative schooling are found to be statistically equivalent. However, this appears to mask considerable heterogeneity within informal borrowing.

Climate change is not only altering weather patterns but also accelerating sea-level rise, leading to increased inundation and saline contamination of soils. Given projected sea-level rise, it is imperative to examine the extent to which farmers in coastal Bangladesh can adapt by diversifying economic activities before resorting to migration within and across borders. Here, to identify patterns in how households adapt to increased sea/freshwater flooding and soil salinity, we analyse nationally representative socioeconomic and migration data against a suite of environmental variables constructed at the sub-district level. Our results show that inundation alone has negligible effects on migration and agricultural production. However, gradual increases in soil salinity correspond to increasing diversification into aquaculture and internal migration of household members. Salinity is also found to have direct effects on internal and international migration even after controlling for income losses, with mobility restricted to certain locations within Bangladesh. Our study suggests that migration is driven, in part, by the adverse consequences of salinity on crop production.

Rainfall measures may be imperfect proxies for floods, given factors such as upstream water balance, proximity to rivers, and topography. We check the robustness of flooding-migration relationships by combining nationally-representative survey data with measures of flooding derived from weather stations, gridded products, and remote sensing tools. Linear probability models reveal that extreme flooding is negatively associated with out-migration. Rainfall-based proxies produce results qualitatively similar to those using the satellite-based measure of inundation, but only the latter is able to discern non-monotonic effects throughout the distribution. Moreover, estimates differ widely across areas, suggesting that households respond differently to rainfall and flooding.

Altruism toward others can inhibit cooperation by increasing the utility players expect to receive in a noncooperative equilibrium. To test this, we examine agricultural productivity in West African polygynous households. We find cooperation, as evidenced by more efficient production, is greater among co-wives than among husbands and wives. Using a game-theoretic model, we show that this outcome can arise because co-wives are less altruistic toward each other than toward their husbands. We present a variety of robustness checks, which suggest results are not driven by selection into polygyny, greater propensity for cooperation among women, or household heads enforcing others’ cooperative agreements.

This paper describes the energy transition in Indonesia and examines the determinants of energy demand, by fuel. The key innovation of this paper is the documentation of how these relationships have evolved over time. We present a new method to combine econometric analysis and index decomposition analysis to examine household energy transition. This approach also allows us to consider a broad range of demographic and structural factors, while providing a clear and concise representation of our findings. We find that the composite indices mask important underlying patterns. In particular, our results indicate that energy transition in Indonesia cannot be confidently attributed to any one index. Rather, it has been driven predominantly by the triple interaction of demographics, income growth, and change in demand/supply parameters. Our findings point to the importance of utilizing time-series data in studying both the characteristics and determinants of energy transition in developing countries.

This paper considers the impact of skill-based immigration restrictions, using the Chinese Exclusion Act as a natural experiment. I find that restrictions reduced the average occupational standing of Chinese immigrants, suggesting substitution between observed and unobserved skills. Conversely, children of restricted immigrants have greater human capital than those of unrestricted immigrants, despite restricted immigrants themselves having lower skill. This suggests particularly strong intergenerational transmission of skill among Chinese immigrants of the exclusion era. More generally, the findings indicate that the effects of skill-based restrictions are not always straightforward and may be heterogeneous across groups.

A burgeoning body of literature highlights asymmetric information among household members. However, little is known about the source of the asymmetry and its effect on efficiency. Using a unique survey of Ghanaian households, we examine the accuracy of spousal cross reports and the effect of discrepancies on farm production. We find that information problems pertain to scale (the quantity of resources) and scope (the distribution of resources), as well as allocation decisions on the margin (Engel curves). Moreover, we find that information asymmetries lead to inefficiency in production, and the effect is equivalent to about 15% of the variation across households.