The RFBerlin Brown Bag Seminar is an informal lunchtime meet up where researchers and students present ongoing work and new ideas in a relaxed, discussion-oriented setting. Rooted in the tradition of bringing one’s own lunch in a paper-brown bag, it offers space for open exchange and constructive feedback. This week we will welcome wo researchers Jim Albrecht & Susan Vroman.
Jim Albrecht is Professor Emeritus of Economics at Georgetown University. He has been a Visiting Professor at Gothenburg University, the Vrije University of Amsterdam, Stockholm University, Osaka University, the University of British Columbia, the University of Melbourne, University College London, and UC Santa Barbara. His current research focuses on equilibrium search theory with applications to the labor and housing markets. He also works on labor market outcomes of women with a particular focus on Sweden. Additionally he is member of the RFBerlin Network.
Susan Vroman is Susan Vroman is Professor Emerita of Economics at Georgetown University. She was awarded an honorary doctorate from Stockholm University in 2023. At Georgetown, she taught courses in labor economics and microeconomic theory. She has been a Visiting Professor at the University of British Columbia, the Free University of Amsterdam, Stockholm University, UCL, UC Santa Barbara, Osaka University, and the University of Melbourne. Her current research focuses on equilibrium search theory with applications to the labor and housing markets. She also works on the labor market behavior of women. She has published several papers on the economics of trade unions.
Event Topic:
Parental Leave: Economic Incentives and Cultural Changes
joint with Per-Anders Edin (Uppsala), Raquel Fernández (NYU), Jiwon Lee (RFBerlin and UNC), and Peter Skogman Thoursie
In 2002, Sweden reformed its parental leave system by adding a second “daddy month,” i.e.,a second month of pay-related parental leave reserved exclusively for each parent. In addition to giving fathers an economic incentive to take more leave, this change had an effect on social norms. We develop and estimate a model of the household in which preferences towards leave depend on the behavior of one’s social group and use it to quantify the magnitudes of the economic-incentive effects as well as the evolving norms. We find that endogenously evolving norms play a major role. We use our model to evaluate the effects of several potential policy changes including decreasing the cost of childcare and giving each parent a substantially larger non-transferable endowment of parental leave and conclude that only the latter would have a significant effect on the share of parental leave taken by men.
Event Details:
Participation in the seminar is limited to RFBerlin members and researchers from affiliated institutions. External researchers who are interested in attending are kindly asked to contact us under [email protected]
