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Papers Containing Keywords(s): 'academic'

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  • Working Paper

    Gender Differences in the Returns to Double Majoring: A Case of Signaling?

    September 2026

    Working Paper Number:

    CES-26-60

    Over 15 percent of college graduates in the United States graduate with more than one major. While much research exists on the returns to different individual majors, less is known about the causal effects of double majoring. This study provides novel estimates on the returns to those who choose to double major as an undergraduate. We improve on previous studies that rely on controls for observable characteristics by addressing selection concerns in two notable ways. First, we control for institution-specific differences that may influence both the decision to double major and subsequent earnings using proprietary data by including institution fixed effects. Second, we adopt a partial identification approach to address non-random selection into double majoring within institutions. Results broadly align with estimates from prior studies at the aggregate level, but reveal notable gender differences not previously detected. Women experience an earnings return to double majoring of approximately 5 percent, while the return for men is statistically negligible. Our analysis suggests that this discrepancy is consistent with double majors serving as a signaling effect in the labor market, which may help offset the gender pay gap.
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  • Working Paper

    Graduating Into Disruption: Labor Market Outcomes for AI-Exposed College Majors

    September 2026

    Working Paper Number:

    CES-26-56

    How are new college graduates affected by the rise of artificial intelligence, and what can this tell us about the mechanisms behind AI's overall labor market effects? We use administrative records on college graduates to observe how economic outcomes among college majors with differing levels of labor market AI exposure have evolved since large language models became available. We find that post-graduation employment, earnings, and job switching patterns among the most AI-exposed college majors began to diverge immediately following the introduction of ChatGPT in late 2022. In regression-adjusted estimates, the most AI-exposed decile of college majors saw their likelihood of initial employment decline by five percentage points, while full-quarter initial earnings declined by thirteen percent. This earnings decline is comparable in magnitude to the earnings losses associated with graduating into a large recession. Roughly half of the decline in earnings is attributable to lower earnings within the industry sectors that employ these graduates, with the remainder resulting from a shift in the industry mix into lower-wage sectors such as restaurants and retail. The effects attenuate as graduates move further from labor market entry but remain substantial for the most exposed majors.
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  • Working Paper

    College Majors and Earnings Growth

    February 2026

    Working Paper Number:

    CES-26-14

    We estimate major-specific earnings profiles using matched American Community Survey (ACS) and Longitudinal Employer-Household Dynamics (LEHD) data. Building on Deming and Noray (2020), we exploit a long earnings panel to overcome key limitations of cross-sectional approaches to lifecycle estimation. We find that engineering and computer science majors experience earnings growth that is comparable to or faster than that of other majors, a category including humanities, education, psychology, and similar fields. In contrast, Deming and Noray (2020) use a crosscohort approach and find that earnings for engineering and computer science majors decline relative to other fields over the lifecycle.
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  • Working Paper

    Double-Pane Glass Ceiling: Commercial Engagement and the Female-Male Earnings Gap for Faculty

    September 2025

    Authors: Joseph Staudt

    Working Paper Number:

    CES-25-68

    I use administrative data from universities (UMETRICS) linked to the universe of confidential W-2 and 1040-C tax records to measure faculty commercial engagement and its role in female-male earnings gaps. Female faculty are 20 percentage points less likely to engage commercially, with the entire gap driven by self-employment. The raw earnings gap is $63,000 on a base of $162,000 and non-university earnings account for $18,000 (29 percent) of this total. Thus, while university pay explains most of the gap, commercial engagement substantially amplifies it. Earnings gaps appear in all components of non-university pay ' self-employment, and work for incumbent, young/startup, high-tech, and non-high-tech firms ' and remain large, though attenuated, after controlling publications, patents, field, university, scientific resources, age, marital status, childbearing, and demographics. Gaps widen as faculty move up the earnings distribution, and commercial engagement becomes a larger contributor. Men and women engage with similar industries, but men earn more in all shared industries.
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  • Working Paper

    A Tale of Two Fields? STEM Career Outcomes

    October 2023

    Working Paper Number:

    CES-23-53

    Is the labor market for US researchers experiencing the best or worst of times? This paper analyzes the market for recently minted Ph.D. recipients using supply-and-demand logic and data linking graduate students to their dissertations and W2 tax records. We also construct a new dissertation-industry 'relevance' measure, comparing dissertation and patent text and linking patents to assignee firms and industries. We find large disparities across research fields in placement (faculty, postdoc, and industry positions), earnings, and the use of specialized human capital. Thus, it appears to simultaneously be a good time for some fields and a bad time for others.
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  • Working Paper

    Diversity and Labor Market Outcomes in the Economics Profession

    July 2022

    Working Paper Number:

    CES-22-26

    While the lack of gender and racial diversity in economics in academia (for students and professors) is well-established, less is known about the overall placement and earnings of economists by gender and race. Understanding demand-side factors is important, as improvements in the supply side by diversifying the pipeline alone may not be enough to improve equity in the profession. Using the Survey of Earned Doctorates (SED) linked to Longitudinal Employer-Household Dynamics (LEHD) jobs data, we examine placements and earnings for economists working in the U.S. after receiving a PhD by gender and race. We find enormous dispersion in pay for economists within and across sectors that grows over time. Female PhD economists earn about 12 percent less than their male colleagues on average; Black PhD economists earn about 15 percent less than their white counterparts on average; and overall underrepresented minority PhD economists earn about 8 percent less than their white counterparts. These pay disparities are attenuated in some sectors and when controlling for rank of PhD granting institution and employer.
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  • Working Paper

    The Color of Money: Federal vs. Industry Funding of University Research

    September 2021

    Working Paper Number:

    CES-21-26

    U.S. universities, which are important producers of new knowledge, have experienced a shift in research funding away from federal and towards private industry sources. This paper compares the effects of federal and private university research funding, using data from 22 universities that include individual-level payments for everyone employed on all grants for each university year and that are linked to patent and Census data, including IRS W-2 records. We instrument for an individual's source of funding with government-wide R&D expenditure shocks within a narrow field of study. We find that a higher share of federal funding causes fewer but more general patents, more high-tech entrepreneurship, a higher likelihood of remaining employed in academia, and a lower likelihood of joining an incumbent firm. Increasing the private share of funding has opposite effects for most outcomes. It appears that private funding leads to greater appropriation of intellectual property by incumbent firms.
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  • Working Paper

    Comparing Earnings Outcome Differences Between All Graduates and Title IV Graduates

    August 2021

    Authors: Andrew Foote

    Working Paper Number:

    CES-21-19

    Recently, two public data products have been released that publish earnings outcomes for college graduates by program of study and institution: Post-Secondary Employment Outcomes and College Scorecard, from the Census Bureau and U.S. Department of Education, respectively. While the earnings data underlying the data products is similar, persons eligible for the frames of the two products is different, with College Scorecard restricted to only students that receive Title IV aid. This paper documents how these differences in the population studied affect the published earnings outcomes. I show that at an institution, of the institutions in my sample, an average of sixty percent of baccalaureate graduates receive Title IV aid, and that the lower the coverage, the large the difference in earnings measurement. Additionally, I show that short-run earnings outcomes are very similar for these two samples, while longer-run outcomes (10 years after graduation) are significantly lower for the Title IV population. I also show that program ranking can change significantly when considering the Title IV population rather than the entire graduate population.
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  • Working Paper

    Do Alternative Opportunities Matter? The Role of Female Labor Markets in the Decline of Teacher Quality

    July 2006

    Authors: Marigee Bacolod

    Working Paper Number:

    CES-06-22

    This paper documents the widely perceived but little investigated notion that teachers today are less qualified than they once were. Using standardized test scores, undergraduate institution selectivity, and positive assortative mating characteristics as measures of quality, evidence of a marked decline in the quality of young women going into teaching between 1960 and 1990 is presented. In contrast, the quality of young women becoming professionals increased. The Roy model of selfselection is used to highlight how occupation differences in the returns to skill determine average teacher quality. Estimates suggest the significance of increasing professional opportunities for women in affecting the decline in teacher quality.
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  • Working Paper

    Science, R&D, And Invention Potential Recharge: U.S. Evidence

    January 1993

    Authors: James D Adams

    Working Paper Number:

    CES-93-02

    The influence of academic science on industrial R&D seems to have increased in recent years compared with the pre-World War II period. This paper outlines an approach to tracing this influence using a panel of 14 R&D performing industries from 1961-1986. The results indicate an elasticity between real R&D and indicators of stocks of academic science of about 0.6. This elasticity is significant controlling for industry effects. However, the elasticity declines from its level during the 1961-1973 subperiod, when it was 2.2, to 0.5 during the 1974-1986 subperiod. Reasons for the decline include exogenous and endogenous exhaustion of invention potential, and declining incentives to do R&D stemming from a weakening of intellectual property rights. The growth of R&D since the mid-1980s suggests a restoration of R&D incentives in still more recent times.
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