Sunday, November 10, 2024

Would you give up some income in order to get a job at a firm whose workers share your political opinions?

See Political Sorting in the U.S. Labor Market from Marginal Revolution.

"That is the central topic of the job market paper of Sahil Chinoy from Harvard University.  Here is the abstract:

We study political sorting in the labor market and examine its sources. Merging voter file data and online résumés to create a panel of 34.5 million people, we show that Democrats and Republicans choose distinctive career paths and employers. This leads to marked segregation at the workplace: a Democrat or Republican’s coworker is 10% more likely to share their party than expected. Then, we ask whether segregation arises because jobs shape workers’ politics or because workers’ politics shape their job choices. To study the first, we use a quasi-experimental design leveraging the timing of job transitions. We find that uncommitted workers do adopt the politics of their workplace, but not workers who were already registered Democrats or Republicans. The average effect is too small to generate the segregation we document. To study the second, we measure the intensity of workers’ preferences for politically compatible jobs using two survey experiments motivated by the observational data. Here, we find that the median Democrat or Republican would trade off 3% in annual wages for an ideologically congruent version of a similar job. These preferences are strong enough to generate segregation similar to the observed levels.

Co-authored with Martin Koenen, also a job market candidate from Harvard."

Related posts:

People gave up a chance to win money in order to avoid hearing from those with opposing political views (2017) 

People say the president can control gas prices if the president belongs to the other party (2017)

Are some blue jeans really Democratic and others Republican? (2019)

Adam Smith Meets Jonathan Haidt (on political polarization and the animosity of hostile factions)  (2023)

Why Tribalism Took Over Our Politics: Social science gives an uncomfortable explanation: Our brains were made for conflict (2023) 

Democrats and Republicans say economy is improving, but mostly only when someone from their party is president (2024) 

Did Fracking in Pennsylvania Turn Democrats Into Republicans and Republicans Into Democrats? (2024)

Are fewer Democrats buying Teslas because of Elon Musk's political views? (2024)

Partisanship deeply colors how Americans think about trade policy, especially tariffs (2024)

See also Americans start caring more about deficits and the national debt when the party they oppose runs them up by John V. Kane of New York University and Ian G. Anson of The University of Maryland. Excerpt:

"In the past two decades, US budget deficits have skyrocketed, and the national debt is now over $22 trillion. But do Americans care about the size of deficits and the national debt? In new research, John V. Kane and Ian G. Anson find that people tend to care more about the deficits and debts when they are increased by presidents from the party that they oppose. Both Republicans and Democrats, they write, become less concerned about governments running deficits when their President is in charge."

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