Recently, a paper co-authored by Russell Cooper, a tenured professor at the Institute for China Economic Research at Liao Ning University, and Carla Varona Cervantes, an economist at the Central Bank of Chile, titled "Determining Gender Differences in Education and Labor Market Outcomes," has been formally accepted for publication by *The Economic Journal* (EJ), a top international journal in economics.

Paper Abstract

This paper investigates gender differences in educational attainment and labor market performance. In 21 OECD countries, although men's overall compensation is higher than women's, women typically have higher college enrollment rates and larger "college wage premiums" (i.e., the additional return to earnings from attending college). This paper explains these phenomena through a quantitative analysis of a dynamic selection model of education and labor market outcomes. Using the estimated model, we decompose the observed gender gaps through a series of counterfactual exercises. The first finding is that these gaps are primarily driven by differences in average pay between men and women in "non-college jobs." Model estimates suggest that women without college degrees earn lower wages, which in turn makes the relative returns to college education larger for them, giving them stronger incentives than men to pursue higher education. The second finding is that, from the perspective of the estimated model, the observed gender pay gap among college-educated workers is mainly due to differences between men and women in the distribution of "ability signals," rather than to employers paying different wages to men and women with the same ability signals.

Journal Introduction

Professor Russell W. Cooper joined Liao Ning University as a tenured faculty member in 2024. He is a Fellow of the Econometric Society. He has published over 100 papers in fields including macroeconomics, industrial organization, international economics, experimental economics, labor economics, and monetary economics, among which 19 are substantial academic papers in the top 5 economics journals. His research covers a wide range of topics, including business cycles, labor market dynamics, fiscal policy, financial policy, and monetary policy. He received his Ph.D. in Economics from the University of Pennsylvania in 1982 and has held faculty positions at the University of Texas at Austin (as Department Chair), Yale University, Stanford University, the University of Iowa, Boston University, Pennsylvania State University, and the European University Institute.

Carla Varona Cervantes is an economist at the Central Bank of Chile. Her primary research interests include macroeconomics, labor economics, and the economics of education. Her work has been published in the European Economic Review.

Paper link:

https://pan.baidu.com/s/1kDWnjLhzgt8l7wmAdAlL1g?pwd=edhu