Essays in Applied Microeconomics

Abstract

This dissertation presents three independent research papers in applied microeconomics. The chapters study how beliefs, institutional conditions, and psychological states shape policy preferences, occupational choices, and risk-taking. Chapter 1 ("Children and the Gender Wage Gap: Beliefs, (Mis)perceptions, and Policy Preferences") examines how people perceive the role of children in explaining the gender wage gap and whether these beliefs affect support for policies aimed at reducing gender inequality. Using an online survey experiment in the United States, the chapter documents that respondents substantially underestimate the contribution of children to the gender wage gap. Providing information about this contribution changes how respondents prioritize different policy measures. In particular, respondents who revise their beliefs upward place greater emphasis on policies addressing child-related earnings differences and less emphasis on policies targeting discrimination. The results further show that fairness perceptions play an important role in shaping overall support for reducing the gender wage gap. Chapter 2 ("Age at Labor Market Entry and Gender Occupational Segregation") investigates whether the age at which individuals enter the labor market affects gender differences in occupational choice. The analysis exploits school-entry cutoff reforms in Germany and combines a regression discontinuity design with data from the German Microcensus and the German Socio-Economic Panel. Men who start school - and consequently enter the labor market - approximately one year earlier are more likely to work in heavily male-dominated occupations. No corresponding effect is found for women. These findings indicate that the timing of labor market entry can contribute to the persistence of occupational gender segregation. Chapter 3 ("Does Stress Impact Risk-Taking?") studies whether acute stress causally affects risk-taking behavior. The chapter reports the results of a high-powered, within-subject laboratory experiment in which participants make incentivized risky choices under both stressful and non-stressful conditions. Although the stress intervention produces clear physiological and self-reported stress responses, it has no detectable effect on average risk-taking or on the tendency to move toward or away from risk-neutral behavior. A between-subject comparison would instead suggest that stress reduces risk aversion, illustrating how differences in baseline preferences can generate misleading conclusions. Taken together, the dissertation demonstrates the importance of carefully designed experiments and quasi-experimental methods for identifying the determinants of economically relevant behavior.