Allocation of Female Talent and Cross-Country Productivity Differences

Munseob Lee

No 16530, IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)

Abstract: The disparities in cross-country labor productivity are greater in agriculture than in other industries. I propose that the misallocation of female talent across sectors distorts productivity. I formalize the theory by using a general equilibrium Roy model with gender-specific frictions. If female workers experience higher frictions in nonagricultural sectors, then female workers who are better skilled at non-agricultural jobs may select into agricultural sector. From a sample of 66 countries, I find that low-income countries have higher frictions in non-agricultural industries. By setting frictions to US levels, agricultural labor productivity increases by 4.3-7.6 percent, nonagricultural labor productivity decreases by 0.7-1.4 percent, and GDP per capita increases by 0.8-1.5 percent.

Keywords: occupational choice; gender; misallocation; productivity (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O11 O13 O47 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 55 pages
Date: 2023-10
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-eff and nep-lab
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Published - published in: Economic Journal, 2024, 134 (665), 3333–3359

Downloads: (external link)
https://docs.iza.org/dp16530.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:iza:izadps:dp16530

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
IZA, Margard Ody, P.O. Box 7240, D-53072 Bonn, Germany

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA) IZA, P.O. Box 7240, D-53072 Bonn, Germany. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Holger Hinte ().