Labor Demand and Workforce Diversity: Evidence from a Natural Experiment
Co-authored with Barbara Boelmann, Lena Janys and Luisa Santiago Wolf
Abstract:
Private companies as well as public institutions often name diversity of their workforce as an explicit goal. By analyzing two major demand shocks in the German academic labor market - the 1960-70s university expansion in West Germany and the 1990s staff replacements in East Germany following reunification - we investigate the role that markets play in shaping faculty diversity. In a traditionally slack academic market characterized by strong networks and lengthy qualification periods, these historical shocks provide insights into how market forces alone, absent targeted interventions, can reshape institutional demographics. We find evidence that these large demand shocks impacted institutional diversity in terms of academic background, but not with respect to gender. In simulations, we investigate implied quality differences: Under conservative assumptions, we show that, considering the pipeline of qualified applicants, the marginal female hire's quality is approximately half a standard deviation higher than the marginal male hire's quality.
Bio:
https://sites.google.com/site/annabindler/
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