Date/Time
Date(s) - 31/01/2025
11:00 am - 12:30 pm

Heather Sarsons, Associate Professor at the Vancouver School of Economics, University of British Columbia, will present to our economics graduate students and faculty on Friday January 31 in KTH 334!

Heather’s research focuses on labour, personnel, and behavioural economics with a particular focus on gender inequality and discrimination. She is also our 2025 Graham Memorial Guest Speaker! You can register for that talk here.

She will present, “Moving to Opportunity, Together“.

Abstract

Many couples face a trade-off between advancing one spouse’s career or the other’s. We study this trade-off using administrative data from Germany and Sweden. Using an event study approach, we find that when couples move across commuting zones, men’s earnings increase more than women’s. To distinguish between men’s greater potential earnings and a gender norm that prioritizes men’s careers, we examine how the patterns differ when the woman has higher potential earnings than her husband. We then estimate a model of household decision-making in which households can (and do) place more weight on income earned by the man.

View Heather’s professional website.