Outside Options in the Labour Market

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Caldwell, Sydnee; Danieli, Oren
• 署名单位: University of California System; University of California Berkeley; National Bureau of Economic Research; Tel Aviv University
• 刊物名称: REVIEW OF ECONOMIC STUDIES
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0034-6527
• DOI: 10.1093/restud/rdae006
• 发表日期: 2024
• 页码: 3286-3315
• 关键词: search; earnings

摘要

This paper develops a method to estimate workers' outside employment opportunities. We outline a matching model with two-sided heterogeneity, from which we derive a sufficient statistic, the outside options index (OOI), for the effect of outside options on earnings, holding worker productivity constant. The OOI uses the cross-sectional concentration of similar workers across job types to quantify workers' outside options as a function of workers' commuting costs, preferences, and skills. Using German micro-data, we find that differences in options explain 20% of the gender earnings gap, and that gender gaps in options are mostly due to differences in the implicit costs of commuting and moving.