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Cultural dimensions have a significant impact on capital structure decisions, particularly in Islamic economies where unique personal, social and ethical values are closely integrated with culture. This study considers the relationship between four Hofstede cultural dimensions to explain their connection with the capital structure decisions of Shariah-compliant firms. Using a panel of 342 Shariah complaint companies from Malaysia, Saudi Arabia and Pakistan for the period 2013 to 2017, this study investigates the influence of cultural dimensions on short-term, long-term and total leverage in the presence of several firm- and country-specific variables. On average, Saudi Arabian firms witnessed comparatively higher percentages of all three debt classifications considered. Typically, determinants of debt do not otherwise differ significantly across the three countries. Firms also carefully consider asset structure and growth opportunities when raising debt capital. On the other hand, when tested alongside cultural dimensions, Islamic firms from countries with (a) higher power distance scores, (b) higher levels of individualism, (c) higher masculinity scores and (d) lower degrees of uncertainty avoidance exhibit a preference for long-term debt. This finding diverges from the existing literature on non-Islamic firms. Agency theory and pecking order theory predominate in explaining our findings.

We link the county-level rollout of stay-at-home orders to anonymized cell phone records and consumer spending data. We document three patterns. First, stay-at-home orders caused people to stay at home: County-level measures of mobility declined 9–13% by the day after the stay-at-home order went into effect. Second, stay-at-home orders caused large reductions in spending in sectors associated with mobility: restaurants and retail stores. However, consumers sharply increased spending on food delivery services after orders went into effect. Third, while the response of residents to stay-at-home orders was fairly uniform across the country, there is substantial county-level heterogeneity in consumer behavior in the days before and after a stay-at-home order.

We analyze sectoral labor reallocation and the reversal of urbanization in the United States during the Great Depression. The widespread movement to farms, which serves as a form of migratory insurance during the crisis, is largely toward farms with low levels of mechanization. In contrast, the mechanized agricultural sector sheds workers, many of whom reallocate into low-productivity or subsistence farming. The crisis perverts the normal process of structural change in which workers displaced by farm equipment are released into more productive occupations, suggesting that macroeconomic fluctuations are an important factor determining the labor market consequences of technological change.

We examine how consumption responds to changes in sentiment regarding government economic policy using cross-sectional variation across counties in the ideological predisposition of constituents. When the incumbent party loses a presidential election, individuals in counties more ideologically predisposed toward the losing party experience a dramatic and discontinuous relative decrease in optimism on government economic policy. Using the interaction of constituent ideology in a county with election timing as an instrument, we estimate the impact of government policy sentiment shocks on consumer spending, and we find a very small effect that cannot be statistically distinguished from zero. The small magnitude of the effect is estimated precisely. For example, we can reject the hypothesis that pessimism regarding government economic policy effectiveness during the Great Recession had as large an effect on consumption as the negative shock to household net worth coming from the collapse in house prices.

In the post World War II period, most U.S. cities experienced large movements of population from the city centers to the suburbs. In this paper we provide causal evidence that this process of suburbanization can be explained by the rise of violent crime in city centers. We do so by proposing a new instrument to exogenously predict violent crime. This instrument uses as time variation the U.S. national levels of lead poisoning. Cross-sectional variation comes from a proxy for soil quality, which explains the fate of lead in soil and its subsequent bio-availability. Using data for more than 300 U.S. cities, results show that the increase in violent crime from the level in 1960 to its maximum in 1991 decreased the proportion of people living in city centers by 15 percentage points. This increase in crime moved almost 25 million people to the suburbs. As a result of suburbanization, we find that people remaining in the city center are more likely to be black people, consistent with the "white flight" phenomenon. We then demonstrate that this suburbanization process had aggregate effects on the city. Exploiting a spatial equilibrium model, we determine that violent crime had externalities on productivity and amenities.

We use longitudinal data from the income tax system to study the impacts of firms’ employment and wage-setting policies on the level and change in immigrant–native wage differences in Canada. We focus on immigrants who arrived in the early 2000s, distinguishing between those with and without a college degree from two broad groups of countries – the U.S., the U.K. and Northern Europe, and the rest of the world. Consistent with a growing literature based on the two-way fixed effects model of Abowd, Kramarz, and Margolis (1999), we find that firm-specific wage premiums explain a significant share of earnings inequality in Canada and contribute to the average earnings gap between immigrants and natives. In the decade after receiving permanent status, earnings of immigrants rise relative to those of natives. Compositional effects due to selective outmigration and changing participation play no role in this gain. About one-sixth is attributable to movements up the job ladder to employers that offer higher pay premiums for all groups, with particularly large gains for immigrants from the “rest of the world” countries.

The U.S. is undergoing a long-term decline in entrepreneurship. We show that this slowdown in entrepreneurship has been more pronounced for skilled individuals – those with at least a college degree. We propose that this skill-biased decline is a response to the rise in worker skill premium that occurred over the same period. In support of this, we document that earnings for workers grew faster than entrepreneurs, particularly for skilled individuals, discouraging the pursuit of entrepreneurship relative to wage employment. To quantify the impact of the skill premium on entrepreneurship, we develop a model of occupational choice that features worker heterogeneity. In the model, an increase in the skill premium – driven by skill-biased technological change – contributes little in lowering entrepreneurship. Instead, around 70% of the observed decline in entrepreneurship is driven by skill-neutral technological change and a rising share of college graduates. The rising skill premium interacts with these forces and fully explains the skill-biased nature of the decline. Further, by shifting the composition of entrepreneurs towards relatively low productivity entrepreneurs, an increase in the skill premium lowers average entrepreneurial productivity. This suggests an integral role for the changing income structure of workers in driving the broader decline in business dynamism in the U.S.

While social capital is commonly held to support collective action, according to Putnam (2000) and Bourdieu (1986) social disparities may result in the formation of narrow social bonds that serve to exacerbate existing social cleavages and may serve as an impediment to effective collective action. Motivated by this insight, we examine the relationship between social disparities and social distancing during the initial, pre-vaccine period of the Covid pandemic in the US. Using a panel of weekly, county-level observations, we find that income, educational and racial disparities are associated with a statistically significant decrease in the social distancing. This result is robust to controls for a wide variety of socioeconomic variables as well as to the contemporaneous infection rate and a commonly used measures of social capital. Our results are consistent with Putnam and Bourdieu’s claims regarding the role of social disparities in the formation of social capital and suggest gains to the development of measures that capture different forms of social capital.

Why are women underrepresented in politics? This paper documents gender differences in the career paths of novice politicians by studying the persistence of candidates after they win or lose elections. I track the political trajectories of over 11,000 candidates in local California elections and use a regression discontinuity approach. Losing an election causes 50 percent more attrition among female than male candidates: an electoral loss causes men to be 16 percentage points less likely to run again within the next four years, whereas the drop for women is 25 percentage points. Yet the gender gap in persistence depends on the setting: I find no evidence of a gap among candidates for high female representation offices or among more experienced candidates. These results are inconsistent with behavioral explanations of women’s differential attrition. Instead, the results suggest that in low information environments, voters may penalize novice female politicians, which deters women from running again. I discuss the implications of the results for the gender gap in officeholding.

Preferences for monetary and nonmonetary job attributes are important for understanding workers' motivation and the organization of work. Little is known, however, about how those job preferences are formed. We study how macroeconomic conditions when young shape workers' job preferences for life. Using variation in income-per-capita across U.S. regions and over time since the 1920s, we find that job preferences vary in systematic ways with experienced macroeconomic conditions during young adulthood. Recessions create cohorts of workers who give higher priority to income, whereas booms make cohorts care more about job meaning for the rest of their lives.

Female support of other women has been put forth as a remedy to the gender gap across many domains. Yet the potential costs associated with gender homophily are not well understood. We propose that homophily aggravates negative gender bias in evaluation. Focusing on the context of entrepreneurship, we theorize that future investors will discount a female entrepreneur’s competence as the key factor in an early-stage investment decision, when the investment comes from a female investor. Consequently, female-backed female entrepreneurs may struggle to raise additional funds from new investors. In a field study of venture-backed startups, we find that firms with female founders who received funding from female rather than male VCs are two times less likely to raise additional financing. We find no equivalent investor gender effect for male-founded firms. In an experimental study, we find that pitches by female-backed female entrepreneurs receive lower evaluations compared with all other pitches, and that this is driven by perceptions of entrepreneur competence. Our findings suggest that well-intentioned calls for women to invest in women not only place an undue burden on female investors, but may also undermine the long-term success of female entrepreneurs. Supplemental Material: The e-companion is available at https://doi.org/10.1287/orsc.2022.1594 .

The insurance industry in the Muslims countries has been making faster growth during the last few decades. The main objective of this paper is to examine the relationship of insurance sector with income per capita in Muslim countries. The countries selected for this analysis are 41 and the time span covered is from 1995 to 2019. The selection of cross-sections and time span is dictated by the availability of data. A number of estimators are used to rigorously analyze the hypothesized relationship, including a couple of the most contemporary macro-panel estimators such as pooled mean group (PMG), common correlated effects mean group (CCEMG), and augmented mean group (AMG). Neutral effect is found for life and non-life insurance penetration on income per capita, which can be attributed to beliefs in Muslim countries. However, we found positive long-run relationship between total insurance activity and income per capita, which can be due to complementarity between life and nonlife insurance activity. The results are found robust after applying robustness checks.

Item does not contain fulltext As a result of global migration processes, Western societies have become increasingly ethnically diverse. Yet not all regions are equally affected by these immigration processes. The current study investigates whether and how ethnic discrimination in hiring is linked with the regional concentration of ethnic minorities, using original data of a large-scale field experiment on ethnic discrimination (N = 4.211) and detailed regional data in the Netherlands. The results show that greater exposure to ethnic minorities in a region is not clearly related with decreased (indicative of positive intergroup contact) or increased (indicative of group threat) ethnic discrimination in hiring. Rather, the findings provide more support for the familiarisation hypothesis: regional concentrations of ethnic minorities are positively associated with ethnic discrimination, however, this effect levels off and turns negative at high concentrations of ethnic minorities. This result holds particularly for minorities with non-Western migrant origins and minorities with Muslim migrant origins. 20 p.

Between 1999 and 2018, 210 shootings have occurred on public school campuses in the United States. Campus shootings call for increased investments in security and student support, which may crowd out instructional resources. Exposure to shootings may also cause students, especially those from socioeconomically advantaged backgrounds, to move away from those schools and neighborhoods, leading to declines in enrollment. Both changes in the budget allocation and the student composition could exert a negative impact on achievement. This study first examines the effects of public school shootings on school districts’ revenue, expenditure, debt, and staffing using a long panel of district-year data. Results from event study and difference-in-differences analyses indicate that shootings increase per-pupil spending by about $248, which is funded primarily through increased federal transfers. Most spending increases occur in noninstructional functions, such as pupil support services, and capital projects, but they do not crowd out instructional spending. Then using school-level data, we show that shootings are followed by a decline in enrollment, driven almost exclusively by the response of students who do not receive free- or reduced-price lunch. Private schools in the area also experience a drop in enrollment. In sum, despite the increased intergovernmental transfers, campus shootings reduce the desirability of the community and lead to the exit of relatively well-off families.

This paper provides evidence of the causal effect of church attendance on petty crime by using quasi-random variation in the number of Sundays when it precipitated at the specific time of most religious services. Using a novel strategy, I find a narrow time window when most individuals attend church. Based on a panel between 1980 and 2016, I find that one more Sunday with precipitation at the time of church increases yearly drug-related, alcohol-related, and white-collar crimes. I do not find an effect for violent or property crimes. These effects are driven by more religious counties. Previous evidence showing negative effects of church attendance on the demand for alcohol and drugs is consistent with a demand-driven interpretation of the results presented.

Stable and adequate housing is critical in the midst of a pandemic; without housing, individuals and families cannot shelter in place to prevent the spread of disease. Understanding and combating housing hardships in vulnerable populations is therefore essential to a sound public health response. This study aims to explore the pandemic’s disproportionate impacts on housing-related hardships across racial/ethnic groups in the United States as well as the extent to which these disparities are mediated by households’ broader economic circumstances; namely, their pre-pandemic liquid asset levels and the experience of COVID-19-related job and income losses. Using a national survey of over 4,000 households, we find that Black and Hispanic respondents were more vulnerable to housing-related hardships during the pandemic than White respondents. These impacts were particularly pronounced in lower-income minority households. For Black respondents, who had much lower levels of pre-pandemic liquid assets than other groups, liquid assets acted as a strong mediator of housing hardship disparities between White and Black respondents. On the other hand, neither liquid asset amounts before the pandemic nor employment shocks during the pandemic explain the pandemic’s disproportionate impacts on Hispanic families. Our findings imply that housing became less stable for racial/ethnic minority groups as a result of the pandemic. In particular, the observed disparities, as well as the mechanisms driving them, demonstrate the necessity of policies and practices that target support to these economically marginalized groups.

Equity crowdfunding has the potential to democratize entrepreneurial finance and provide female entrepreneurs with new and equal access to early-stage financing. In this paper, we present first empirical evidence on gender stereotypes in the context of technology ventures in equity crowdfunding. Drawing on signaling and gender role congruity theory, we hypothesize that quality signals have different effects depending on whether they are sent by male or female entrepreneurs. Results taken from a sample of 263 equity crowdfunding campaigns run by technology ventures confirm our hypotheses. In line with gender stereotypes, management experience is beneficial for male entrepreneurs but detrimental for female entrepreneurs. Interestingly, media coverage as a third-party signal has the oppositive effect, being more effective for female entrepreneurs.

The amount of family income is a factor conditioning the size and structure of consumption. It is also a determinant of a family’s behavior, as it enables to satisfy the basic human needs and it is an essential element of the quality of each family’s life. Income also affects the relationship between both spouses, parents and children. Household budget also generates development and education of children, it allows or restricts their perspectives for the future. Difficult financial situation of Polishfamilies imposes limitations on the basic consumption needs.

The aim of this study is to investigate three relevant dimensions of Brazilian inequality in the labor market, gender, race and age, in the period 2012-2020. More specifically, we analyze how these statistics were affected by the crisis due to Covid-19. It is observed that inequalities in participation, unemployment, occupation and informality rates are not reduced during the 2020 crisis. On the contrary, there is an increase in the difference of employment to population ratio by race and age. The results also indicate that 2020 is characterized by an unusual increase in the chances of job loss and a reduction in the chances of getting a job. It is important to note that even when controlling for other personal or job characteristics, women, blacks and young people are more likely to lose their jobs. Nonetheless, this disadvantage is not specific of the 2020 crisis.

The current changes in ratio of Russia’s main socioeconomic groups (working-age, youth, and elderly) are adversely impacting the country’s economic development. The purpose of this article is to re...

While a large literature is interested in the relationship between family and labor supply outcomes, little is known about the expectations of these objects at earlier stages. We examine these expectations, taking advantage of unique data from the Berea Panel Study. In addition to characterizing expectations, starting during college, the data details outcomes for ten years after graduation. Methodological contributions come from approaches to validate quality of survey expectations data and the recognition that expectations data, along with longitudinal data, can potentially help address endogeneity issues arising in the estimation of the causal effect of family on labor supply.

Although income is an important predictor of life satisfaction, the precise forces that drive this relationship remain unclear. We propose that financial resources afford individuals a path to reducing the distressing impact of everyday hassles, thereby increasing one’s life satisfaction. More specifically, we hypothesize that financial scarcity is associated with greater distress intensity in everyday life. Furthermore, we propose that lower perceived control helps explain why financial scarcity predicts higher distress intensity and lower life satisfaction. We provide evidence for these hypotheses in a 30-day daily diary study (522 participants, 13,733 observations). A second study ( N = 376) further suggests that, although everyone relies on social support to ease stress, financial scarcity shrinks the sense one can use economic resources to reduce the adverse impact of daily hassles. Although money may not necessarily buy happiness, it reduces the intensity of stressors experienced in daily life—and thereby increases life satisfaction.

This paper studies how the expansion in schooling infrastructure affects the female literacy rate using the Education for All program in India. I exploit the variation in the targeting of the program to educationally and not educationally backward sub-districts. Using regression discontinuity and panel data of all schools in India, I find that there was a significant expansion in the number of girls' schools and residential schools for girls in the educationally backward areas. But being classified as educationally backward did not lead to a significant effect on either the female literacy rate or the gender gap in literacy rate. To achieve a quicker solution to low levels of literacy, alternative cost effective methods compared to large scale infrastructure programs can be explored.

Recent evidence suggests that female-led firms are more likely to be targeted by activist investors. We examine how Chief Executive Officer (CEO) gender influences retail investors' responses to proxy contests. We find that these investors are more likely to support-through their proxy voting behavior-campaigns that target female-led versus male-led firms, despite the fact that retail investors evaluate female and male CEOs similarly. We show that this apparent discrepancy is a function of how subjective ratings mask stereotype-influenced judgments, consistent with the shifting standards model (SSM). Respondents use lower standards to evaluate female versus male CEOs. This difference becomes apparent when externally-anchored judgments are employed, such as when investors are asked to choose sides in a proxy contest. Correspondingly, activists are judged as relatively more competent when targeting female-led firms. Our findings contribute to research on CEO gender and activism. In doing so, our research also introduces the SSM to the investor decision-making literature, thereby enriching the discussion about what mechanisms underpin the less favorable investment outcomes female-led firms can experience. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).

We study how non-financial multinational companies propagate economic declines from their subsidiaries located in countries experiencing an economic downturn to subsidiaries in countries not experiencing one. We find that investment is 18% lower in subsidiaries of these parents relative to the same-industry, same-country subsidiaries of parents that are headquartered in the same parent country but do not have a subsidiary in a country experiencing an economic downturn. The employment growth rate in the affected subsidiaries is zero or negative while it is 1.4% in the subsidiaries of unaffected parents. The aggregate industry-level sales and employment are also negatively impacted in the countries of the affected subsidiaries.

Long hours worked associated with higher hourly wages are common to many occupations, known as nonlinear occupations. Over the last four decades, both the share of workers in nonlinear occupations and their relative wage premium have been increasing. Females in particular have been facing rising experience premiums, especially in these types of occupations. We quantitatively explore how these changes have affected the female labor supply over time using a quantitative, dynamic general equilibrium model of occupational choice and labor supply at both the extensive and intensive margins. Our decomposition analysis finds that rising experience premiums are important in explaining the intensive margin of female labor supply, which has continued to increase even in the most recent period. Meanwhile, technical changes biased toward nonlinear occupations help to explain recent stagnating female employment rates. Finally, a counterfactual experiment suggests that, if the barrier aspects of nonlinearities had instead gradually vanished, female employment over this same time period would have been considerably higher at the expense of significantly lower labor supplies at the intensive margin.

This study sheds light on the contingent effect that employee human capital may have on the relationship between family involvement and internationalisation via exporting —both in terms of entry mode (how to export) and degree (how much to export). We formulate several hypotheses by drawing mainly on arguments from the resource-based view and stewardship theory. The empirical setting is a large sample of Spanish manufacturing firms (family and non-family) operating between 1991 and 2016. Our results reveal that the positive (negative) relationship between family involvement and export intensity (direct exporting) is boosted (mitigated) at higher levels of employee human capital. Our findings thus provide statistical support for a positive and significant contingent approach to the effect human capital has on the connection between family involvement and internationalisation.

Empirical evidence suggests that the social effects of internal migration may be substantially different from those associated with the arrival of international migrants. In this paper, I provide the first evidence of the effect of internal migration on crime with longitudinal data from Brazilian microregioes . Using local labour demand shocks in the manufacturing sector as an instrument for migratory flows, I find that a 10 per cent increase in the in-migration rate translates into a 6 per cent increase in the homicide rate in destinations.

This paper takes a novel time series perspective on the financing of K-12 schooling. About half of school spending is financed by state government aid to local districts, and because state aid is generally income conditioned, it acts as a mechanism for risk sharing between school districts. We show that temporal inequality, due to state and local business cycles, is prevalent across the income distribution. We estimate a model of local revenue and state aid, and its allocation across districts, and use the parameters to simulate impulse response functions. We find that state aid provides risk sharing for local shocks, although slow speed of adjustment results in temporal inequality. There is little risk sharing for statewide income shocks, and the risk from such shocks to school spending is more severe in low-income districts because of their greater reliance on state aid.

Historic districts preserve the heritage of designated areas and tend to attract tourism income. However, these districts also come with specific restrictions and increased housing prices that could result in segregation. We study how two historic district programs impact residential segregation in Denver. We find that home buyers are more likely to be White within historic districts, but that the official designation has no effect on this probability. Similarly, when examining seller-to-buyer housing transactions, we find that most transactions flow from White sellers to White buyers, regardless of the official designation. Thus, while historic districts tend to be more segregated than their surrounding areas, the legal restrictions and housing premium that come with historic designations do not seem to amplify this existing problem.

Objective: In this study, we investigate the effect of flexible working time arrangements and parental leave experiences on the actual working and childcare hours of men. Background: Many fathers want to spend more time with their children and actively participate in family life, but, after becoming a parent, most work even more hours than before. To better combine work and family, the possibility of flexible working time arrangements might play a crucial role for fathers, also to become more involved in childcare activities. Method: We use longitudinal data of the German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP) to examine how flexible working time arrangements, parental leave experiences, working hours, and childcare hours are related. Based on data between 2013 and 2019, panel regression models were estimated. Results: The results show that a change from fixed to flexible working time regulations leads to an increase in working hours for men and fathers. The longer working hours of fathers go hand in hand with a reduction in the time spent on childcare activities when switching to flexible working time arrangements. However, experiences with parental leave in connection with flexible working hours show a change in the use of time. Conclusion: Flexible working time regulations prove to be ambivalent for fathers: On the one hand, they offer fathers new leeway, on the other hand, due to traditional role models, they lead to longer working hours and thus less participation in childcare; but parental leave experiences make a difference, which indicates the importance of these regulations for fathers. Fragestellung: In dieser Studie untersuchen wir den Einfluss von flexiblen Arbeitszeitregelungen und Elternzeiterfahrungen auf die tatsächlichen Arbeits- und Kinderbetreuungszeiten von Männern. Hintergrund: Viele Väter möchten mehr Zeit mit ihren Kindern verbringen und aktiv am Familienleben teilnehmen, aber die meisten arbeiten nach der Geburt eines Kindes noch mehr Stunden als zuvor. Zur besseren Vereinbarkeit von Beruf und Familie könnte die Möglichkeit flexibler Arbeitszeitregelungen für Väter eine entscheidende Rolle spielen, auch um sich stärker in die Kinderbetreuung einzubringen. Methode: Anhand von Längsschnittdaten des Sozio-oekonomischen Panels (SOEP) untersuchen wir den Zusammenhang zwischen flexiblen Arbeitszeitregelungen, Elternzeiterfahrungen, Arbeitszeiten und Kinderbetreuungszeiten. Basierend auf Daten zwischen 2013 und 2019 wurden Panel-Regressionsmodelle geschätzt. Ergebnisse: Die Ergebnisse zeigen, dass der Wechsel von festen zu flexiblen Arbeitszeitregelungen zu einer Erhöhung der Arbeitszeit bei Männern und Vätern führt. Diese längeren Arbeitszeiten gehen bei Vätern mit einer Verkürzung des Zeitaufwands für Kinderbetreuungsaktivitäten einher, wenn auf flexible Arbeitszeitregelungen umgestellt wird. Väter mit Elternzeiterfahrung zeigen jedoch eine veränderte Zeitnutzung, wenn sie zu flexiblen Arbeitszeiten wechseln. Schlussfolgerung: Flexible Arbeitszeitregelungen erweisen sich für Väter als ambivalent: Einerseits bieten sie Vätern neue Spielräume, andererseits führen sie aufgrund traditioneller Rollenmodelle zu längeren Arbeitszeiten und damit weniger Beteiligung an der Kinderbetreuung; aber Elternzeiterfahrungen machen einen Unterschied, was die Bedeutung dieser Regelungen für Väter betont.

This paper documents the auditing profession’s gender salary gap in a setting where the overall society consists of a high degree of gender equality. Using Swedish administrative data from 2007 to 2015 for all CPAs, I find that the auditing profession’s overall gender salary gap has substantially declined: the gap in 2015 is less than half the size of the 2007 gap. More female auditors have moved up to the top earnings group during this period, demonstrating an evident lessening of the glass ceiling phenomenon. Oaxaca-Blinder analysis shows that auditor’s clientele size is the most important factor in explaining the salary gap, and the increase in female auditors’ clientele size during this period accounts for half of the decrease in the total salary gap. Further, I also find evidence that the rise of female leadership in Big Six firms is positively associated with the increase in female auditors’ clientele size. Consistent with Kunze and Miller (2017), such ‘women help women’ effect in the auditing environment is more pronounced in the middle and lower half of the firm hierarchy, suggesting that female representation at the top of the firm has spillover benefits for lower-ranked female auditors. The implications of this study may help audit firms close their gender gap and better cope with the overall auditing industry’s talent challenges.

This paper studies the impact of labor market conditions during the education-to-work transition on workers' long-term skill development. Using representative survey data on measures of work-relevant cognitive skills for adults from 19 countries, I document four main findings: i) cohorts of workers who faced higher unemployment rates at ages 18–25 have lower skills at ages 36–59; ii) unemployment rates faced at later ages (26–35) do not have such an effect; iii) the former findings hold even though, on average, people get more formal education as a response to higher unemployment in their late teens and early twenties; iv) skill inequality is affected: workers whose parents were less educated bear most of the negative effects. These findings can be rationalized by on-the-job learning during the early twenties being an important factor of skill-development, and such learning being negatively impacted by bad macroeconomic conditions. Using German panel data on skills, I show that young workers at large firms experience higher skill growth than those at small firms. This finding suggests firm heterogeneity in human capital provision to young workers as a potential mechanism since, in bad economic times, young workers disproportionately match with small firms.