Nicole M. Fortin

Labor Market Institutions and the Distribution of Wages, 1973-1992: A Semiparametric Approach

This paper provides evidence that the decline in the real value of the minimum wage and in the rate of unionization account for a significant share of the increase in wage inequality in the United States between 1979 and 1988. The role of the minimum wage is particularly important for women, while deunionization has the largest impact on men. The authors develop a semiparametric procedure that applies kernel density methods to appropriately weighted samples. The procedure provides a visually clear representation of where in the density of wages institutional and labor market forces exert the greatest impact. Copyright 1996 by The Econometric Society.

The Gender Wage Gap among Young Adults in the United States The Importance of Money versus People

Using two single-cohort longitudinal surveys, the NLS72 and the NELS88, I investigate the impact of four noncognitive traits—self-esteem, external locus of control, the importance of money/work and the importance of people/family—on wages and on the gender wage gap among these young workers. I find that gender differences in these noncognitive factors, especially the importance of money/work, have a modest but significant role in accounting for the gender wage gap. Methodologically, this paper proposes a correction to the Oaxaca-Blinder-Ransom decomposition that results in a truly decomposable approach compatible with the simple pooled regression that includes a gender dummy.

Rank Regressions, Wage Distributions and the Gender Gap.

In this paper, we model the interactions between the distribution of male and female wages under the assumption that any change in the wage distribution of women must be offset by an opposite change in the wage distribution of men.

Canadian Inequality: Recent Developments and Policy Options

Les inégalités de revenus ont fait l’objet d’inquiétudes de plus en plus marquées depuis quelque temps dans le monde. Toutefois, le débat s’est fait en des termes très généraux et a surtout porté sur le cas des États-Unis. On ne peut comprendre comment le Canada devrait réagir à cette situation sans présenter des faits et des chiffres clairs. Dans cet article, nous analysons les tendances des inégalités de revenus, et nous examinons en particulier le groupe constitué par le 1 % des citoyens ayant le revenu le plus élevé – celui dont il est le plus souvent question. Nous résumons ensuite les connaissances actuelles sur les causes des inégalités croissantes de revenus, dont la disparité salariale entre les sexes. Enfin, nous décrivons des politiques publiques qui permettraient de réduire ces inégalités – ou à tout le moins d’en ralentir l’aggravation.

Leaving Boys Behind: Gender Disparities in High Academic Achievement

Using data from the “Monitoring the Future” surveys, this paper shows that from the 1980s to the 2000s, the mode of girls’ high school GPA distribution has shifted from “B” to “A,” essentially “leaving boys behind” as the mode of boys’ GPA distribution stayed at “B.” In a reweighted Oaxaca-Blinder decomposition of achievement at each GPA level, we find that changes to gender differences in post-secondary expectations, in particular expectations for attending graduate or professional school, are the most important factors accounting for this trend after controlling for school ability and they occur as early as the eighth grade.

Allocation Inflexibilities, Female Labor Supply, and Housing Assets Accumulation: Are Women Working to Pay the Mortgage?

This article uses data from the 1986 Canadian Family Expenditures Survey to estimate a life-cycle-consistent model of household labor supply and commodity demand that incorporates a mortgage qualification constraint based on earnings. Both the parametric and nonparametric implications of the model suggest that the labor supply of a nontrivial percentage of married women is constrained by mortgage commitments. The results of generalized selectivity models of female labor force participation and labor supply show that the positive effect of a high debt service ratio exceeds the negative effect of young children.

Changes in Wage Inequality in Canada: An Interprovincial Perspective

This paper uses the Canadian Labour Force Survey to understand why the level and dispersion of wages have evolved differently across provinces from 1997 to 2013. The faster increase in the level of wages and the decline in wage dispersion in Newfoundland, Saskatchewan and Alberta are the starkest interprovincial differences. We find that they are accounted for by the growth in the extractive resources sectors, which benefited less-educated and younger workers the most. Increases in minimum wages since 2005 are found to be the main reason why wages at the very bottom grew more than those in the middle of the distribution.

Superstition in the Housing Market

We provide the first solid evidence that Chinese superstitious beliefs can have significant effects on house prices in a North American market with a large immigrant population. Using real estate data on close to 117,000 house sales, we find that houses with address number ending in four are sold at a 2.2% discount and those ending in eight are sold at a 2.5% premium in comparison to houses with other addresses. These price effects are found either in neighborhoods with a higher than average percentage of Chinese residents, consistent with cultural preferences, or in repeated transactions, consistent with speculative behavior.

Young in Class: Implications for Inattentive/Hyperactive Behaviour of Canadian Boys and Girls

Using data from the Statistics Canada National Longitudinal Survey of Children and Youth (NLSCY), this paper investigates the impact of school entry age on inattentive/hyperactive behaviours. We employ both an across-provinces and time difference-in-differences approach and a within-province regression discontinuity design. We find that being young in class causes greater inattentive/hyperactive behaviour, exacerbating any inattentive/hyperactive behaviour exhibited prior to school entry. These results also hold in sibling fixed effect models. We do not find gender differences in the effects, although since boys are more likely to be inattentive/hyperactive at school entry, they are more affected. These effects persist into early adolescence.

Inequality and Changes in Task Prices: Within and between Occupation Effects ☆

Abstract This paper seeks to connect changes in the structure of wages at the occupation level to measures of the task content of jobs. We first present a simple model where skills are used to produce tasks, and changes in task prices are the underlying source of change in occupational wages. Using Current Population Survey (CPS) wage data and task measures from the O*NET, we document large changes in both the within and between dimensions of occupational wages over time, and find that these changes are well explained by changes in task prices likely induced by technological change and offshoring.