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BLOOMBERG COVERS PROFESSOR GUEORGUI KAMBOUROV'S WORK
October 10, 2017
If labour were allocated in a gender-neutral way, output per hour would climb as people made better use of their time, given their skills.


Professor Gueorgui KambourovProfessor Gueorgui Kambourov's NBER working paper Hours, Occupations, and Gender Differences in Labor Market Outcomes, co-authored with Andrés Erosa, Luisa Fuster (both of Universidad Carlos III de Madrid) and Richard Rogerson (Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs, Princeton), forms the basis of a Bloomberg article, “The U.S. Economy Would Be Better Off If Men Did More Housework”.

The paper sheds light on gender differences in labor market outcomes that arise because of gender asymmetries in home production responsibilities. An exogenous difference in time devoted to home production of ten hours per week increases the observed gender wage gap by roughly eleven percentage points and decreases the share of females in high hours occupations by fourteen percentage points. The implied misallocation of talent across occupations has significant aggregate effects on productivity and welfare.