Daniel L. Hicks

Does Mother Tongue Make for Women's Work? Linguistics, Household Labor, and Gender Identity

This paper studies the formation and persistence of gender identity in a sample of U.S. immigrants. We show that gender roles are acquired early in life, and once established, persist regardless of how long an individual has lived in the U.S. We use a novel approach relying on linguistic variation and document that households with individuals whose native language emphasizes gender in its grammatical structure are significantly more likely to allocate household tasks on the basis of sex and to do so more intensively. We present evidence of two mechanisms for our observed associations – that languages serve as cultural markers for origin country norms or that features of language directly influence cognition and behavior. Our findings do not appear to be driven by plausible alternatives such as selection in migration and marriage markets, as gender norms of behavior are evident even in the behavior of single person households.

How responsive is higher education? The linkages between higher education and the labour market

Higher education is considered vital for developing a productive and dynamic labour force to meet the demands of the global economy. How effectively does the US higher education sector respond to labour market signals? We match US postsecondary degree completions from 1984 to 2008 with occupational employment statistics and employ an Instrumental Variable (IV) strategy to examine the supply response to changes in occupation specific demand. The supply of educated workers appears weakly responsive to short-term wage signals and moderately responsive to long-term employment conditions. Analysis reveals a sizeable degree of heterogeneity and lag in the responsiveness across specific occupation–degree pairings. Failure to respond rapidly to changes in labour demand may be one factor driving inequality in wages across occupations and in the aggregate economy. We suggest some simple policy measures to help increase the responsiveness of the higher education sector, both in terms of the output of specific degree programmes and the overall mix and composition of graduate completions.

War and the Political Zeitgeist: Evidence from the History of Female Suffrage

Despite the upheaval associated with warfare, empirical evidence linking conflict with institutional development is limited. This paper examines the hypothesis that international wars accelerated democratization by fostering political inclusion. Employing survival analysis, I find that during the 20th century, nations engaging in external conflict were more than twice as likely to extend the franchise to women in the post-conflict period, even after controlling for other commonly cited determinants of suffrage adoption. I explore several potential mechanisms for this association and find evidence consistent with stories which connect war with increased national unity, ideological fervor, and international posturing. Finally, examining conflict-induced changes in sex ratios and female labor force participation suggests that the underlying determinants of suffrage expansion at the national and sub-national level differ.

Jealous of the Joneses: conspicuous consumption, inequality, and crime

Empirical research on the relationship between economic inequality and crime has focussed on income inequality, despite the fact that income is not easily observed by potential criminals. We extend this literature by shifting the focus from income to its visible manifestation—conspicuous consumption. Using variation within US states over time, we document a robust association between the distribution of conspicuous consumption and violent crime. Our results link violent crime to inequality in visible expenditure, but not to inequality in total expenditure, suggesting that information plays a key role in the determination of crime. Furthermore, focussing on conspicuous expenditure allows for new tests of competing theories of crime. Our findings are consistent with social theories that link crime with relative deprivation, but provide little support for traditional economic theory.

Decomposing Culture: An Analysis of Gender, Language, and Labor Supply in the Household

Language and Female Economic Participation Victor Gay, Daniel L. Hicks, Estefania Santacreu-Vasut, and Amir Shoham Abstract: This paper explores the relationship between the use of gender in language and the gender gap in economic participation. Using the American Community Survey, we show that among female migrants to the U.S., those who speak a language which makes sex-based grammatical gender distinctions exhibit lower labor force participation, hours worked, and weeks worked during the year, with larger effects for languages with more pervasive gender elements. To account for the impact of correlated origin country influences, we employ a fixed effects strategy and obtain identification off of variation in language spoken across immigrants from the same country. “In some languages gender is evident in almost every phrase, while in other languages it is absent” (Corbett, 2011). When present, genders provide a source of classification, allowing nouns to be assigned to groups. For instance, the Spanish sentence Ellos van a ver una película (They are going to a movie) contains multiple grammatical references to gender not present in all languages. While the noun película (movie) is not intrinsically male or female, here it is assigned a feminine article una. Similarly, the use of the masculine plural pronoun Ellos is directly related to biological sex – referring to a group including at least one male. Many languages, including English, lack systems such as gender assignment of nouns or gendered plural pronouns. These linguistic differences mean that some groups of individuals are forced to draw far more frequent gender distinctions in everyday conversation and in thought. This paper examines the hypothesis that speakers of highly gendered languages exhibit stronger gender-specific norms in their behavior. To accomplish this, we study the employment decisions of U.S. immigrants on the basis of sex and language spoken. Migrants face a similar economic environment which allows us to separate cultural influences acquired prior toDespite broad progress in closing many dimensions of the gender gap around the globe, recent research has shown that traditional gender roles can still exert a large influence on female labor force participation, even in developed economies. This paper empirically analyzes the role of culture in determining the labor market engagement of women within the context of collective models of household decision making. In particular, we use the epidemiological approach to study the relationship between gender in language and labor market participation among married female immigrants to the U.S. We show that the presence of gender in language can act as a marker for culturally acquired gender roles and that these roles are important determinants of household labor allocations. Female immigrants who speak a language with sex-based grammatical rules exhibit lower labor force participation, hours worked, and weeks worked. Our strategy of isolating one component of culture reveals that roughly two thirds of this relationship can be explained by correlated cultural factors, including the role of bargaining power in the household and the impact of ethnic enclaves, and that at most one third is potentially explained by language having a causal impact.

Lucky Late Bloomers? The Consequences of Early Marriage for Women in Western Kenya

We examine the impact of early marriage across a wide range of outcomes for women in rural western Kenya. The timing of physical maturation in girls has been shown to influence marriage timing in a quasi-random manner, and we find that each additional year that menarche is delayed is associated with an increase of 0.25 years in age at first marriage. Using age of menarche as an instrument for marital age, we show that delayed marriage increases female educational attainment, some academic test scores, and self-reported measures of health. At the same time, age of marriage appears to have little direct effect on many other important life outcomes including labor market participation, earnings, attitudes and beliefs, marriage market outcomes, and child health.

Marriage Market Matching and Conspicuous Consumption in China

Visible expenditures which convey higher socioeconomic status may help individuals differentiate themselves in the marriage market when there is competition for partners and imperfect information. We examine a unique dataset of automobile purchasers in China to investigate the extent to which skewed sex ratios influence expenditure decisions for this highly visible commodity. Using a triple difference approach, we show that unmarried male consumers who face an unfavorable sex ratio purchase more expensive, luxury vehicles than their married peers. Lower income borrowers and those residing in regions with the worst sex ratios exhibit the largest relative degree of conspicuous consumption. In addition to the direct cost of consumption signaling, we demonstrate that this behavior generates negative externalities in the form of lower average fuel economy and higher average vehicle weight. As it has worsened sex ratios, status competition and the associated negative repercussions we identify represent unintended consequences of Chinas one child policy.

Are female politicians more responsive to international crises

This article analyses bilateral foreign aid flows over the period 1973 to 2010 to investigate whether the gender composition of legislatures in donor nations affects the aid response to recipient country crises. Our findings suggest that donors with higher shares of women in office provide larger amounts of foreign aid in the wake of a disaster or war in a recipient nation. This response increases in size with the magnitude of the crisis and is especially pronounced for aid flows designated as disaster relief.

The Secondary Market Impact of Quality and Pricing Decisions for New Product Generations: Competing with your own products

We develop a two†period model of firm choice with a used good market in which a monopolist producer of durable goods selects quality and price in each period. Our model allows for endogenous quality improvements and demonstrates the importance of analysing the impact of pricing decisions and quality improvements on the secondary market jointly, as under reasonable circumstances, quality improvements can lead to the appearance of a spurious inverse relationship between the price for a new product and the secondary market price. Examined jointly, quality improvements in the new product are shown to lower used good prices, while higher new good prices have the opposite effect. An empirical investigation using a newly compiled data set of the US video game market supports our theoretical analysis.

Is there adaptation to predictable climate change along the temperature-conflict nexus? Evidence from the El Niño Southern Oscillation

ABSTRACT A growing body of research connects short-run deviations in weather with violence. Less well understood is the scope for agents to adapt to medium and longer-run climate fluctuations. We follow existing research and use the existing climactic forces of the El Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO) to analyse climate change – exploiting the fact that in 1989 published forecasts of these fluctuations became available. In a generalized differences framework, we contrast the impact of ENSO in affected areas of the globe relative to unaffected areas before and after 1989, finding no robust evidence that adaptation efforts are successfully mitigating conflict or civil unrest occurring as a result of these fluctuations.