Weilong Zhang

Accepted, European Economic Review

A model of how personality traits affect household time and resource allocation decisions and wages is developed and estimated. In the model, households choose between two behavioral modes: cooperative or noncooperative. Spouses receive wage offers and allocate time to supply labor market hours and to produce a public good. Personality traits, measured by the so-called “Big Five” traits, can affect household bargaining weights and wage offers. Model parameters are estimated by Simulated Method of Moments using the Household Income and Labor Dynamics in Australia (HILDA) data. Personality traits are found to be important determinants of household bargaining weights and of wage offers and to have substantial implications for understanding the sources of gender wage disparities.

Revision Requested by Quantitative Economics

This paper develops a dynamic discrete choice model of schooling and occupational choices that incorporates time-varying personality traits, as measured by the so-called “Big Five" traits. The model is estimated using the Household Income and Labor Dynamics in Australia (HILDA) longitudinal dataset from Australia. Personality traits are found to play a critical role in explaining education and occupational choices over the lifecycle. The traits evolve during young adult years but stabilize in the mid-30s. Results show that individuals with a comparative advantage in schooling and white-collar work have, on average, higher cognitive skills and higher personality traits, in all five dimensions. The estimated model is used to evaluate two education policies: compulsory senior secondary school and a 50% college subsidy. Both policies are found to be effective in increasing educational attainment, but the compulsory schooling policy provides greater benefits to lower socioeconomic groups. Allowing personality traits to evolve with age and with years of schooling proves to be important in capturing policy response heterogeneity.

Contemporary Economic Policy 32, no. 4 (2014): 729-751.

In this paper, we use a dynamic structural model to measure the effects of (i) single mothers’ work and welfare use decisions and (ii) welfare reform initiatives on the early cognitive development of the children of the NLSY79 mothers. We use PIATMath scores as a measure of attainment and show that both the mothers’ work and welfare use benefit children on average. Our simulation of a policy that combines a time limit with work requirement reduces the use of welfare and increases employment significantly. These changes in turn significantly increase children’s cognitive attainment. This implies that the welfare reform was not only successful in achieving its stated goals, but was also beneficial to welfare children’s outcomes. In another policy simulation, we show that increasing work incentives for welfare population by exempting labor income from welfare tax can be a very successful policy with some additional benefits for children’s outcomes. Finally, a counterfactual with an extended maternal leave policy significantly reduces employment and has negative, though economically insignificant, impact on cognitive outcomes.