Jessica Pan

Gender and discrimination

Much of Pan's work focuses on the role of sexism and other forms of discrimination on labor market outcomes. In work with Emir Kamenica and Marianne Bertrand in The Quarterly Journal of Economics,^[9] Pan shows that there are few marriages in which women earn more than their husbands, with divorce rates increasing when women begin to earn more.^[10][11] She also shows that when women earn more, they are more likely to take up household chores, even though their opportunity cost of doing so is higher.^[10]

In work in The Journal of Human Resources,^[12] Pan and co-authors show that "sexism", as measured by an index of questions asked in the General Social Survey, varies considerably across US states, and adversely affects women's labor market outcomes where they currently reside.^[13] To achieve this, she leverages plausibly exogenous variation in migration patterns resulting from settlement patterns of past waves of migrants and the physical distance between different labor markets.^[12]

Education and disruptive behavior

In work with Marianne Bertrand in the American Economic Journal: Applied Economics,^[14] Pan shows that there exists a large divide between the social and behavioral outcomes of boys and girls brought up in single-parent homes. By the age of 10–11, Pan shows that boys in single-parent households are much more likely to get suspended than their female counterparts.^[15][16] This is despite little effect of early school environment on subsequent non-cognitive gaps between girls and boys.^[14]