Activity Reports

International Conference 15th Trans Pacific Labor Seminars, 2025@Tokyo

1. Title:

15th Trans Pacific Labor Seminars, 2025@Tokyo

2. Organizing:

Reiko Gotoh’s Research Group B03

3. Date:

May 29 and 30, 2025

4. Location:

Teikyo University Kasumigaseki Campus

5. Format:

Face-to-Face (Language: English)

6. Program:

9:00

Opening remarks by Takao Kato and Reiko Gotoh

Session 1:

Inequality, Labor Movement, and Technology
Chair: Peter Kuhn

9:05-9:45

Nina Roussille, MIT: How Does Wage Inequality Affect the Labor Movement? With Barbara Biasi, Zoë Cullen and Julia Gilman

9:45-10:25

Takahiro Toriyabe, Hitotsubashi University: Linking Lifecycle and Cross-sectional Inequality: Cohort Dynamics and the Role of Technological Change. With Christian Dustmann and Eric Klemm

Session 2:

Childcare and Gender
Chair: Ryo Kambayashi

10:55-11:35

Mari TANAKA, University of Tokyo and Hitotsubashi University: The Effects of Workplace Interventions on Men’s Childcare Participation: Evidence from a Randomized Controlled Trial. With Hiroko Okudaira, Mariko Sakka, and Shintaro Yamaguchi.

11:35-12:15

Dmitri Koustas, University of Chicago: Childcare in the Era of Remote Work. With Yana Gallen, Stephanie Karol and Ithai Lurie.

Session 3:

Gender Integration in Organizations
Chair: Takao Kato

13:15-13:55

Melanie Wasserman, UCLA: The Effects of Gender Integration on Men: Evidence from the U.S. Military

13:55-14:35

Chihiro Inoue, Kobe University: Does the Gender Ratio at Colleges Affect High School Students’ College Choices? Joint with Asumi Saito and Yuki Takahashi.

Session 4:

Gender norms
Chair: Reiko Gotoh

15:05-15:45

Virginia Minni, University of Chicago: Managers and the cultural transmission of gender norms

15:45-16:25

Saisawat Samutpradit, Osaka University: Me After You: Household Responses to Spousal Death in a Developing Economy

18:00

Conference Dinner at Garb-central (Tokyo Garden Terrace Kioicho)

Session 5:

Policy Interventions in the Labor Market I
Chair: Peter Kuhn

9:00-9:40

Nguyen Thanh TUNG, Hitotsubashi University: Minimum Wage, Firm Revenue, and the Role of Product Switching

9:40-10:20

Simon Quach, University of Southern California: The Impact of Pay Transparency in Job Postings on the Labor Market

Session 6:

Policy Interventions in the Labor Market II
Chair: Ryo Kambayashi

10:50-11:30

Katsuhiro Komatsu, Kyoto University: The Welfare Impact of Reemployment Bonuses

11:30-12:10

Peter Kuhn, UC Santa Barbara: Measuring Bias in Job Recommender Systems: Auditing the Algorithms. Joint with Shuo Zhang.

Session 7:

Heterogeneity in Schools and Work
Chair: Atsushi Yamagishi

13:15-13:55

Hitoshi SHIGEOKA, University of Tokyo: Hotter Days, Wider Gap: The Distributional Impact of Heat on Student Achievement. With Mika AKESAKA

13:55-14:35

Miguel Zerecero, UC Irvine: No More Limited Mobility Bias: Exploring the Heterogeneity of Labor Markets

Closing remarks by Peter Kuhn

7. Number of participants:

approximately 40

8. Summary and Small Remarks:

8-1. General Remarks:

Recently, empirical research in economics has made rapid progress by adopting the concept of causal inference; however, its impact evaluation has been limited to determining whether wages increase, for example, and seems to have overlooked discussions of normative value judgments. If causality in policy judgments is to be seriously questioned, criteria for evaluating policy effects should also be considered at the same time. In this conference, while relying on individual papers, we attempted to deepen the normative discussion by intersecting their perspectives with each other.

Many of the papers were highly complete and well reported, as they had already been reported in several seminars and published as working papers. We believe that the econometric analysis skills of the authors were impeccable. The papers covered a wide range of materials. (see below for abstracts of the papers).

For example, in econometric methodology, Miguel Zerecero (UC Irvine) proposed a new Monte Carlo simulation method for the decomposition method of the fixed effects by Abowd, Kramatz, and Margolis (the so-called AKM decomposition). Also, Katsuhiro Komatsu (Kyoto University) and Takahiro Toriyabe (Hitotsubashi University) both argued that the aggregation of a stream of value judgments over the future can be simplified by using the optimal solution. The former paper dealt with the conditions of unemployment benefits, and the latter with the variation in consumption, and although the contents of the two papers were completely different, their proposals were aligned in terms of tools for empirical research. Empirical research on normative consciousness will be essential in the future and these econometric findings will be indispensable for estimating fixed-effects models and aggregating quantities over a certain period of time (e.g. currently assessing the anticipated future well-being).

Simon Quach (University of Southern California), Nguyen Thanh Tung (Hitotsubashi University), and Peter Kuhn (UC Santa Barbara) examined the impact of institutions and systems in the labor market. Quach focused on the mandatory salary information in job postings, Tung on the rise of minimum wages in Vietnam, and Kuhn on labor market matching algorithms. Each examined their respective factors’ impact on firms’ behavior. In particular, Quach’s paper argued that pay transparency in postings encouraged competition among firms in the same industry and had the effect of increasing wages. However, Virginia Minni (University of Chicago) raised a different argument regarding the effect of market competition. Her paper did not deal with labor market institutions but reported the fact that the gender norms behind managers in multinational firms affected the actual gender gap in wages. As Quach pointed out, if the wage difference in the real labor market came as a result of competition (regardless of the social norms that market participants’ have), how do we make a coherent interpretation with Minni’s findings about the current situation of multinational firm where norms/attitudes of the concerned parties could influence the wage difference? No conclusion was reached at the seminar. Yet, we found that there is a need to further explore theoretically the relationship between decision-making under competitive market pressures (through information disclosure) in economics and the social norm formation.

On the other hand, some papers suggested how individual workers and consumers form social norms. For example, Chihiro Inoue (Kobe University) argued that the reason why men and women are biased when making college choices is because there is a desire not to be a minority in terms of gender. How to incorporate the value judgments of minorities into group norms is one of the main issues in normative research, but in reality, this paper showed that behavior comes first in order to avoid becoming a minority. If such a behavior is due to the fact that the value judgments of minorities are neglected in Japanese society, it is highly significant to realize the method of social norm formation in this paper. In addition, Mari Tanaka (University of Tokyo and Hitotsubashi University) reported that participation in work-life balance training at companies as well as disclosure of what coworkers think when a worker wants to take a childcare leave, encouraged the use of childcare leave and participation in household chores. As employers, companies essentially do not need to intervene in their workers’ life norms. In reality, however, the influence of the working environment away from home on workers’ attitudes toward their daily lives cannot be ignored. This study discussed the impact of unilateral intervention in the absence of a spouse on the formation of norms that require mutual agreement, and its detailed mechanisms would need to await further research. Saisawat Samutpradit (Osaka University) examined changes in behavior in the face of major shocks such as the death of a spouse, and Dmitri Koustas (University of Chicago) found that paid childcare declined after the pandemic and attributed this to the spread of remote work. Who is responsible for childcare is an important social norm, and there is much debate in Japan as to how it should be implemented, but rather than a normative consciousness, the paper suggested that it is simply a matter of differences in behavioral patterns due to economic restraints/restrictions such as the length of time spent at home. If the differences in behavioral patterns are clearly traceable, as in this paper, it may be possible to separate it from normative consciousness, but the question of how to sort out the differences between normative consciousness and behavioral patterns when behavioral patterns cannot be clearly traced, as is the case in Japan, is one that is relevant to our empirical research.

Hitoshi Shigeoka (University of Tokyo) reported a paper showing that rising temperatures due to climate change caused deterioration of academic performance in schools, and that the introduction of air conditioning offset this deterioration. At first glance, this paper may seem unrelated to the seminar, but it showed that environmental change did indeed affect human thinking. The idea that the recent global ambiguities emerged as a result of climate change may seem far-fetched, but the issue of how climate change affects people’s behaviors including willingness to cooperate is yet to be explored. At this point, its research environment cannot be considered fully sufficient. The impact of climate change on human beings may indeed be a new issue to be discussed.

(written by Ryo Kambayashi)

8-2. Specific Remarks: In sum, each paper had a perspective connected to normative research. In the following, we will highlight two papers and try to examine the normative issues more specifically.

(1) How Does Wage Inequality Affect the Labor Movement? (by Nina Roussille et.al)

In the past, those who supported the labor movement (unions) seemed to share a common anger against labor exploitation. The fact of wage inequality between managers and workers, and between workers and workers, was, ironically speaking, the clue that invigorated the labor movement.

In contrast, the conclusions of this paper, based on solid empirical research, are somewhat shocking. In the contemporary US, the fact of wage inequality is individualized in the workers’ consciousness, making collective action itself difficult.

For example, union organizers tend to avoid the major issue of the company’s overall wage inequality, but rather, deal with wage conflicts among small, relatively homogeneous groups by diverting their demands to non-wage demands such as amenities. Workers who can benefit from individualized bargaining in unequal environments tend to be the first to leave collective action.

If this is true, then we can conclude that labor unions no longer have an antagonistic force against growing wage inequality. This conclusion may appropriately capture the serious difficulties that the welfare state in US has recently faced.

In the first empirical experiment, the authors explore the evaluations and performance of union organizers in two settings: “equal pay” and “skill-based differential pay” (vignette survey). They also show reports of wage inequality to workers on strike and explore the possibility of changing their attitudes.

These are clearly intervention studies, albeit mild. I am not denying intervention studies in the sense that any survey research cannot escape the implicit influence of the purpose that the researchers have in mind. Rather, I applaud the authors for their bold research work. The problem is the design.

How to evaluate wage inequality in a given population is a normative and public issue. It requires a social planner’s perspective in which each researcher leaves his or her own position and looks at the society as a whole. Can we create a public reasoning about equity itself, for example, how to balance multiple distribution criteria (e.g., distribution according to contribution, effort, need and so on) ?

I think that the vignette survey in the first experiment provides a clue to this, but I could not follow how the normative questions and interpretations in the first experiment are connected to the other two studies. I look forward to discussing this again sometime.

(2) The Effects of Gender Integration on Men: Evidence from the U.S. Military (by Melanie Wasserman et.al)．

The primary interest of this paper seems to be occupational segregation by gender in general, and not an exploration of the particularities of “combat occupations” (in private military companies). The opening question, “how men respond to the initial entry of women into an exclusively male occupation?”, the goal of this paper, “leverage removal of explicit ban to shed light on implicit barrier,“ and the conclusion that ”there is a wedge between men’s perceptions and their performance” are all universally applicable to occupational segregation by gender in general.

To add, the three perception indices (Organizational Effectiveness, Equal Opportunity, and Sexual Assault Prevention and Response) and plural performance indices (retention, promotion, demotion, separation from employment, criminal charges, health status, etc.) are comprehensive and applicable to occupational segregation by gender in general. There is no doubt that the applicability of this study is extremely broad.

At the same time, however, by using detailed administrative and survey data on “combat occupations” as a basis, this paper succeeds in exposing the specificity of “combat occupations” themselves. It seems to undertake the inherent normative question of what kind of skills, morals, and responsibilities are required of “combat jobs.” If so, why not add the following two questions?

i) Behind the development of “gender equalization,” would it be used as an excuse for accepting racial inequality or nationality inequality?

ii) Are there any signs that “gender equalization” will reconfigure existing values in the “combat occupation” itself or in the environment surrounding it (e.g., increased attention to the rights and dignity of the inhabitants of the combat zone, promotion of moves toward the end of the fighting, etc.)?

The second question generally tends to flow from the biological essentialism of motherhood (e.g., women have a preference for peace). However, this paper avoids it, I think, since the analytical framework of this paper allows us to generalize the problem as “the possibility of reconfiguring existing values by the entry of minorities”. To add to the first question, there is a growing discussion outside of economics about the intersectionality of discrimination. It would be exciting to see a solid econometric empirical study like this one participate in such a discussion!

Through reading each paper from the two perspectives of methodology and policy implications, the following issues emerge. What policy implications a researcher will derive is closely related to the method of research he or she adopts. The method of research is deeply influenced by the researcher’s own (usually implicit) normative theory. This suggests that even when conducting a factual analysis, it is essential to examine the normative theory itself prior to or in parallel with the factual analysis.

This was a valuable finding from the collaboration between TPLS, a cutting-edge research group in econometrics, and the Dignity Studies Research Group.

(written by Reiko Gotoh)

9. Abstracts

Nina Roussille, MIT: How Does Wage Inequality Affect the Labor Movement? With Barbara Biasi, Zoë Cullen and Julia Gilman

This paper provides the first empirical test of the causal impact of inequality on the labor movement, using three complementary research designs. First, we survey nearly 200 U.S. union organizers, presenting incentivized hypothetical choices about how to allocate campaign resources across workplaces with varying degrees of wage dispersion. Second, we experimentally increase the salience of wage inequality by disclosing a pay report to members of the Writers Guild of America during an active strike. Third, we exploit a natural experiment in Wisconsin—a pay reform that increased wage inequality among public school teachers. Linking administrative wage data to individual union dues payments, we identify which workers respond by withdrawing support. Across all three studies, we find that rising pay inequality significantly undermines collective action. This effect is concentrated among workers who stand to benefit most from individual bargaining in unequal environments. Moreover, our organizer survey reveals that inequality also shapes union strategy: in more unequal settings, organizers tend to target smaller bargaining units and campaign on non-wage amenities, aiming to reduce internal conflict over wage demands. Together, our results highlight the potential for “inequality traps” whereby collective action, viewed as the counteracting force against inequality, becomes harder as wage gaps widen.

Takahiro Toriyabe, Hitotsubashi University: Linking Lifecycle and Cross-sectional Inequality: Cohort Dynamics and the Role of Technological Change. With Christian Dustmann and Eric Klemm

This paper examines the determinants of cross-sectional and lifecycle inequality using a lifecycle earnings process model that incorporates earnings mobility and non-employment risks across birth cohorts and over time. Unobserved skill prices and the variance of individual fixed effects across cohorts are the primary drivers, with unemployment risk being a key determinant of life cycle inequality. To explain the increase in the variance of fixed effects, we interpret these within a Roy model as realized productivity influenced by both ability and task choice. We provide evidence that technological change can amplify inequality by widening the variation in individual productivity, in addition to the standard mechanism that operates through price changes.

Mari TANAKA, University of Tokyo and Hitotsubashi University: The Effects of Workplace Interventions on Men’s Childcare Participation: Evidence from a Randomized Controlled Trial. With Hiroko Okudaira, Mariko Sakka, and Shintaro Yamaguchi.

This study examines the effectiveness of workplace interventions in promoting men’s participation in childcare. Collaborating with firms, we conduct a randomized controlled trial to evaluate two interventions: a work-life balance training program and an information provision initiative. Our findings demonstrate that these interventions can influence both attitudes and behaviors. Male participants of the training reported increased time spent on childcare, and their spouses’ work hours increased. Both training and information intervention successfully corrected misperceptions about colleagues’ attitudes towards paternity leave. Although intent to take paternity leave did not significantly change, overall attitudes improved. These results provide valuable insights for policymakers and organizations seeking to address gender gaps in caregiving responsibilities and promote work-life balance.

Dmitri Koustas, University of Chicago: Childcare in the Era of Remote Work. With Yana Gallen, Stephanie Karol and Ithai Lurie.

While the labor force participation of mothers of young children has never been higher, use of paid childcare has fallen below pre-pandemic levels in the United States. We provide new links between administrative tax data on paid childcare and maternal labor supply to investigate the cause of these seemingly incongruous trends. The key hypothesis we probe is the role of increased workplace flexibility. In particular, we examine whether the decline in paid childcare is driven by mothers in more flexible occupations and at firms with more generous remote-work policies. We also examine the role of increased grandparental caregiving driven by Covid-era early retirements and changes in the quality and price of non-relative childcare, and how grandparental availability interacts with the workplace flexibility of mothers. By matching firm remote-work policies with tax records, and leveraging differences in the timing of flexible arrangements among otherwise similar firms, we analyze the impact of increased workplace flexibility on childcare demand and wage growth for mothers. We find that most of the overall decline in paid childcare in 2022 and 2023 can be attributed to teleworkable jobs by mothers and fathers. Our panel dataset, encompassing the universe of U.S. taxpayers, provides an unprecedented first look at how the remote work revolution is shaping the gender wage gap.

Melanie Wasserman, UCLA: The Effects of Gender Integration on Men: Evidence from the U.S. Military

Do men negatively respond when women first enter an occupation? We answer this question by studying the end of one of the final explicit occupational barriers to women in the U.S.: in 2016, the U.S. military opened all positions to women, including historically male-only combat occupations. We exploit the staggered integration of women into combat units to estimate the causal effects of the introduction of female colleagues on men’s job performance, behavior, and perceptions of workplace quality, using monthly administrative personnel records and rich survey responses. We find that integrating women into previously all-male units does not negatively affect men’s performance or behavioral outcomes, including retention, promotions, demotions, separations for misconduct, criminal charges, and medical conditions. Most of our results are precise enough to rule out small, detrimental effects. However, there is a wedge between men’s perceptions and performance. The integration of women causes a negative shift in male soldiers’ perceptions of workplace quality, with the effects driven by units integrated with a woman in a position of authority. We discuss how these findings shed light on the roots of occupational segregation by gender.

Chihiro Inoue, Kobe University: Does the Gender Ratio at Colleges Affect High School Students’ College Choices? Joint with Asumi Saito and Yuki Takahashi.

Despite the negligible gender gap in mathematics and sciences in OECD countries, female students remain less likely to major in STEM in college. One potential explanation is that these fields are male-dominated, making female students a minority. We investigate whether the gender ratio at colleges affects high school students’ college choices. Using an incentivized discrete choice experiment, we show that both female and male students prefer gender-balanced college programs over male- or female-majority ones. The primary reason students avoid being a minority is concern about the difficulty of adapting to such environments. We find no evidence of preference heterogeneity based on academic performance, socioeconomic background, or between STEM and non-STEM programs. These findings suggest that promoting gender balance in colleges can lead to a more efficient allocation of talent.

Virginia Minni, University of Chicago: Managers and the cultural transmission of gender norms

This paper examines the influence of managers from countries with different gender norms on workplace culture and gender disparities within organizations. Using data from a multinational firm operating in over 100 countries, we exploit cross-country manager rotations that are orthogonal to workers to estimate the impact of male managers’ gender norms on the work outcomes of male and female workers within the same team. We find that managers from countries with 1 s.d. more progressive gender attitudes narrow the gender pay gap by 5 percentage points (18%), primarily by promoting women at higher rates. The effects last beyond the manager’s rotation and are concentrated in countries with more conservative gender attitudes. Moreover, workers in the destination office change their own attitudes, as evidenced by those workers in turn being more gender-equal with their subordinates. Our evidence points to individual managers as critical in shaping corporate culture.

Saisawat Samutpradit, Osaka University: Me After You: Household Responses to Spousal Death in a Developing Economy

This study examines the impact of death on surviving household members in settings where such events often constitute significant economic shocks. In developing economies, weak pension systems lead individuals to work into old age, and limited social security provides little support for families following the loss of a household member. Using long-term panel data from Thailand and a staggered difference-in-differences approach that exploits variation in the timing of death among the elderly, we analyze how survivors adjust to spousal loss. Following a spouse’s death, widow households experienced a decline in public transfers, whereas widower households saw little change, a disparity attributed to gender imbalances in the pension system. Widows often took over household businesses with support from children and relatives, while widowers tended to reduce their labor supply. Coresidency with children, particularly daughters, increased, and widow households temporarily benefited from higher gift income. Overall, our findings suggest that survivors rely more on informal support networks than on formal insurance mechanisms.”

Nguyen Thanh TUNG, Hitotsubashi University: Minimum Wage, Firm Revenue, and the Role of Product Switching

This paper utilizes a comprehensive data set at the firm- and firm-product levels to examine the minimum wage effects on firm revenue and its components, and the role of product switching. By decomposing firm sales revenue by type of products, this paper finds that continuing products contribute a large share to the sales revenue growth. However, the sales revenue of continuing products is negatively affected by the minimum wage while newly added products help offset this adverse effect. Empirical findings suggest that both manufacturing and non-manufacturing firms in Vietnam could not rely on output price adjustments to respond to the minimum wage shock. Importantly, through product switching, especially adding new products, manufacturing firms can protect their sales revenue from the shock and mitigate the negative employment effect.

Simon Quach, University of Southern California: The Impact of Pay Transparency in Job Postings on the Labor Market

A number of states in the US have recently passed policies that require employers to provide salary information in job postings. Although these policies aim to increase workers’ wages, there are ambiguous theoretical predictions and limited empirical research on their impacts. This paper studies the labor market effects of these laws using a combination of data from Lightcast, Glassdoor, and the Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages. Leveraging a difference-in-difference design, we find that employers increased the fraction of postings with salary information by 30 percentage points, although there remains substantial noncompliance. Across all three datasets, we find consistent evidence of an increase in wages of around 1.3-3.6%. At the same time, we find no impacts on pay dispersion, employment, the number of job postings, or skill and education requirements. Overall, we find evidence that pay transparency in postings increased competition in the labor market, leading to positive impacts on wages even for incumbent workers and firms that were always posting wages, neither of which were directly targeted by the policy.

Katsuhiro Komatsu, Kyoto University: The Welfare Impact of Reemployment Bonuses

This paper investigates the welfare impact of reemployment bonuses in a dynamic job search model. Reemployment bonuses, monetary incentives offered to workers who quickly get reemployed, may mitigate the moral hazard in unemployment insurance (UI) while preserving consumption smoothing. I first derive a sufficient statistic formula for the welfare impact of reemployment bonuses given the current level of UI benefits. The formula clarifies the channels through which reemployment bonuses affect welfare and can be evaluated without requiring a full specification of all model primitives. Evaluating the formula using U.S. data, I find a large positive welfare impact of reemployment bonuses. Furthermore, I also fully calibrate the model and find that incorporating reemployment bonuses into the UI system allows the government to optimally provide more generous UI benefits than the case without reemployment bonuses.

Peter Kuhn, UC Santa Barbara: Measuring Bias in Job Recommender Systems: Auditing the Algorithms. Joint with Shuo Zhang.

We audit the job recommender algorithms used by four Chinese job boards by creating fictitious applicant profiles that differ only in their gender. Jobs recommended uniquely to the male and female profiles in a pair differ modestly in their observed characteristics, with female jobs advertising lower wages, requesting less experience, and coming from smaller firms. Much larger differences are observed in these ads’ language, however, with women’s jobs containing 0.58 standard deviations more stereotypically female content than men’s. Using our experimental design, we can conclude that these gender gaps are generated primarily by content-based matching algorithms that use the worker’s declared gender as a direct input. Action-based processes like item-based collaborative filtering and recruiters’ reactions to workers’ resumes contribute little to these gaps.

Hitoshi SHIGEOKA, University of Tokyo: Hotter Days, Wider Gap: The Distributional Impact of Heat on Student Achievement. With Mika AKESAKA

We demonstrate that heat disproportionately impairs human capital accumulation among low-performing students compared with their high-performing peers, using nationwide examinations data from 22 million students in Japan. Given the strong correlation between academic performance and socioeconomic background, this suggests that heat exposure exacerbates pre-existing socioeconomic disparities among children. However, access to air conditioning in schools significantly mitigates these adverse effects across all achievement levels, with particularly pronounced benefits for lower-performing students. These findings suggest that public investment in school infrastructure can help reduce the unevenly distributed damage caused by heat to student learning, thereby promoting both efficiency and equity.

Miguel Zerecero, UC Irvine: No More Limited Mobility Bias: Exploring the Heterogeneity of Labor Markets

We propose a bootstrap method to correct limited mobility bias in the variance components of AKM models. Our method handles multiple corrections without increasing computational cost and works with any symmetric estimator of the error covariance matrix, including the one from Kline, Saggio, and Sølvsten (2020). Monte Carlo simulations show our method corrects the bias and is faster than alternative methods. Using French administrative data, we apply our method in four ways: (i) a full-sample variance decomposition of log wages under different assumptions on the error structure, (ii) correcting thousands of labor markets to study the relationship between market size and worker-firm or worker-coworker sorting, (iii) analyzing gender differences and (iv) life cycle patterns in wage components. In all cases, the corrections are important to interpret the results.