Political Sorting in the U.S. Labor Market

 [[{“value”:”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
The post Political Sorting in the U.S. Labor Market appeared first on 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.  Koenen’s other papers, at the link, look very interesting too.

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 Economics, Political Science, Uncategorized