Assistant Professor Nickolas Gagnon receives DKK 3,167,624 for his project “Beliefs about gender differences and actual differences”.

He describes the project as follows:

What are beliefs about gender differences in the labor market and what are actual gender differences? Gender inequality is a major societal issue that is still difficult to explain. Economists often explain part of it through beliefs: individuals may treat women worse because they believe there are differences in work-related characteristics and skills between men and women. However, we know little about beliefs about gender differences in skills, especially on a large scale. How frequent are such beliefs? Are there actual gender differences and are beliefs accurate? How do we measure them? This project investigates beliefs about gender differences in a range of work-related characteristics and actual gender differences. I will first develop the methodology to do so on a large scale, combining incentivized experiments and survey questions. Then, I study, at a country level, actual gender differences and beliefs about those differences, and investigate how both of those factors are to explain societal outcomes. Overall, this project aims to massively increase our knowledge about beliefs about gender differences and actual differences. The resulting method and results will inform gender discrimination research, promote rigorous societal debates, and benefit the development of evidence-based policy designs.

Associate Professor Bastian Schulz receives DKK 3,163,261 for his project “Disentangling the Interplay of Marriage, Divorce, Fertility, and Work: Evidence from Natural Experiments”. Frederik Almar will be part of the project as postdoc partly financed by the grant.

Bastian Schulz describes the project as follows:

Families make joint decisions with significant consequences at both the individual and societal levels, including marriage, divorce, labor supply, and fertility. Trends such as the rise in single-headed households, changes in who marries whom, declining fertility, and increasing female labor supply underscore the need to better understand how family decisions interact. Marriage and partner choice, for example, affect labor supply and fertility, while labor market outcomes influence marriage rates and stability. The endogeneity of marriage and divorce decisions makes it difficult to study these interactions without relying on theory and structural models, which often rest on strong assumptions. We exploit three natural experiments in Denmark that generate exogenous variation in marital status to study the evolution of fertility, career trajectories, and well-being for both men and women. Our findings will provide key empirical inputs to both structural modelling and policymaking.

Associate Professor Daisuke Adachi receives DKK 1,706,364 for his project “Decoding Human Capital Investments: The Role of Firm-Specific Training in Career Development”. Associate Professor Lars Skipper is a project member. 

Daisuke Adachi describes the project as follows:

This project examines how companies train their employees and the effect of this training on career development. Employees can acquire general skills that can be used in many places or firm-specific skills that are valuable primarily in one company when they participate in courses.

Using unique Danish administrative data, we will develop a new method for measuring the specificity of training programs. Rather than classifying training as general or specific, we will place programs on a continuous spectrum based on their actual use by companies.

We will also examine how companies decide which employees to train and what to train them in, as well as how these decisions are influenced by costs and subsidies. By analyzing the effects of a 2011 reform that altered the subsidy structure, we can better understand the influence of economic incentives on training decisions.

Our research will provide new insights into how companies' training decisions influence employees' skill development, wage growth, and job opportunities. This is important for understanding how the labor market works and how policy measures can improve companies' and workers' ability to invest in skills.