When Opportunity Knocks: Confronting Theory and Empirics About Dynamics of Gender Wage Inequality

We present empirical evidence that large structural shocks are followed by changes in labor market inequality. Specifically, we study short-run fluctuations in adjusted gender wage gaps (unequal pay for equal work) following episodes of structural shocks in the labor markets, using several decades of individual data for a wide selection of transition countries. We find that for cohorts who entered the labor market after the onset of transition. Labor market shocks lead to significant declines in the gender wage gap. This decrease is driven mostly by episodes experienced among cohorts who enter the labor market during the transition. By contrast, we fail to find any significant relation for cohorts already active in the labor market at the time of transition. We provide plausible explanations based on sociological and economic theories of inequality.

Projecting a Life-cycle Income – a Simulation Model for the Slovak Pension Benefit Statement

The introduction of a regulation requiring pension asset managers to provide savers with an estimation of pension benefits opened a wide range of scientific questions on the projection methods and estimation of input parameters. One of them is the estimation of life-cycle income for calculating expected contributions and the estimation of the benefit ratio at the moment of retirement. We present an estimation of life-cycle income functions for various age and educational cohorts influenced by temporary labor market shocks. By employing the resampling simulation method for incorporating macroeconomic shocks, we have shown that using longitudinal data on the income process from a large closed economy could bring valid results for a country with a small open economy as well where the longitudinal data on income processes of individuals are unavailable. Our findings could serve a practical use when pension or other social benefits tied to individual income should be modelled.

Research Inisghts: The Unintended Effects of a Noncontributory Pension Program during the Covid-19 Pandemic

Results show that becoming eligible for an established, noncontributory pension program during the Covid-19 crisis in Bolivia increased the probability that households had a weeks worth of food stocked by 25 percent and decreased the probability of going hungry by 40 percent. The positive impacts are particularly large for households that experienced labor market shocks at the onset of the pandemic, and for low-income households for which the transfer represents a larger share of household income. During a systemic crisis, such as the Covid-19 pandemic, a preexisting nearuniversal pension program quickly delivered positive impacts, in line with the primary goals of a social safety net.

On households and unemployment insurance

We study unemployment insurance in a framework where the main source of heterogeneity among agents is the type of household they live in: some agents live alone while others live with their spouses as a family. Our exercise is motivated by the fact that married individuals can rely on spousal income to smooth labor market shocks, while singles cannot. We extend a version of the standard incomplete‐markets model to include two‐agent households and calibrate it to the US economy with special emphasis on matching differences in labor market transitions across gender and marital status as well as aggregate wealth moments. Our central finding is that changes to the current unemployment insurance program are valued differently by married and single households. In particular, a more generous unemployment insurance reduces the welfare of married households significantly more than that of singles and vice versa. We show that this result is driven by the amount of self‐insurance existing in married households, and thus, we highlight the interplay between self‐ and government‐provided insurance and its implication for policy.