Publishing Institution: The John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University / Publication Year: within 5 Years

Author:: Ina Ganguli, Ricardo Hausmann, and Martina Viarengo
Publication Date:: 04-2020
Content Type:: Working Paper
Institution:: The John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University
Abstract:: We examine gender gaps in career dynamics in the legal sector using rich panel data from one of the largest global law firms in the world. The law firm studied is representative of multinational law firms and operates in 23 countries. The sample includes countries at different stages of development. We document the cross-country variation in gender gaps and how these gaps have changed over time. We show that while there is gender parity at the entry level in most countries by the end of the period examined, there are persistent raw gender gaps at the top of the organization across all countries. We observe significant heterogeneity among countries in terms of gender gaps in promotions and wages, but the gaps that exist appear to be declining over the period studied. We also observe that women are more likely to report exiting the firm for family and work-life balance reasons, while men report leaving for career advancement. Finally, we show that various measures of national institutions and culture appear to play a role in the differential labor-market outcomes of men and women.
Topic:: Gender Issues, Labor Issues, Women, Employment, Inequality, Human Capital, and Legal Sector
Political Geography:: Global Focus

Author:: Laura Metzger, Theodore Svoronos, and Adnan Qadir Khan
Publication Date:: 04-2020
Content Type:: Working Paper
Institution:: The John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University
Abstract:: In a lab-in-field experiment with elite civil servants in Pakistan, we investigate whether groups outperform individuals in a two-staged task which requires effective use of data and evidence. We also study how efficiently groups harness their members’ individual knowledge for problem-solving. We do not find a significant difference in individual (first stage) and group performance (second stage). Yet, groups could have significantly improved their performance during the second stage of the task, had they more efficiently collaborated to retrieve their members’ respective knowledge. Carefully interpreted in the setting of our experiment, our data suggests that diversity in individual knowledge may hamper effective use of data and evidence for decision- making in small groups of policymakers.
Topic:: Education, Public Policy, and Civil Servants
Political Geography:: Pakistan and South Asia

Author:: Ricardo Hausmann, Ljubica Nedelkoska, and Sehar Noor
Publication Date:: 02-2020
Content Type:: Working Paper
Institution:: The John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University
Abstract:: We study the factors behind the public sector premium in Albania and Sri Lanka, the group heterogeneity in the premium, the sources of public sector wage compression, and the impact of this compression on the way individuals self-select between the public and the private sector. Similar to other countries, the public sectors in Albania and Sri Lanka pay higher wages than the private sector, for all but the most valued employees. While half of the premium of Sri Lanka and two-thirds of it in Albania are explained by differences in the occupation-education-experience mix between the sectors, and the level of private sector informality, the unexplained part of the premium is significant enough to affect the preferences of working in the public sector for different groups. We show that the compressed distributions of public sector wages and benefits create incentives for positive sorting into the public sector among most employees, and negative sorting among the most productive ones.
Topic:: Employment, Human Capital, Public Sector, and Private Sector
Political Geography:: South Asia, Sri Lanka, and Albania

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