Cited: Emily Nix in Financial Times
The Financial Times cites research by NIX, assistant professor of finance and business economics, finding heterosexual women see a persistent drop in their income after giving birth.
Emily Nix is a labor economist who studies the economic impacts of violence against women, the gender income gap, inequality, and human capital accumulation. Her research and expertise have been featured in the Economist, the Guardian, the Financial Times, NPR, and more. She has worked as a consultant to both the Minneapolis Federal Reserve and the World Bank. Nix is also an award-winning teacher who made news in 2020 when she created a DIY light board to enhance the remote learning experience for her students. Nix received her PhD from Yale and her BA from UNC Chapel Hill where she was a Morehead-Cain scholar.
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INSIGHT + ANALYSIS
Cited: Emily Nix in Financial Times
The Financial Times cites research by NIX, assistant professor of finance and business economics, finding heterosexual women see a persistent drop in their income after giving birth.
Podcast: Emily Nix on She+Geeks Out
Discussing her research on gender and the workplace on the She+Geeks Out podcast, NIX, assistant professor of finance and business economics, discusses the economic impacts of violence against women at work.
Quoted: Emily Nix on Stanford's King Center
NIX, assistant professor of finance and business economics, shares with Stanford's King Center the importance of research to fight gender-based violence.
NEWS + EVENTS
Marshall Faculty Publications, Awards, and Honors: August 2024
We are proud to recognize the many accomplishments of Marshall’s exceptional faculty, including recently accepted and published research and achievements in their field.
2024 Golden Apple and Golden Compass Awards
These faculty and staff members were recognized by students for their impact in the Marshall community.
Cutting-Edge Research Exhibited at Marshall Fair
From craft whiskey to financial crime, the Marshall Research Fair showcased groundbreaking studies in multiple subjects.
USC Marshall Professor Researches Where Politics Meets Business
Emily Nix’s new research analyzes whether it’s more beneficial for companies to issue political statements or remain silent.
2024 USC Marshall Research Fair
Scholars present their latest research on the impacts of new technology — February 23rd from 11:30 a.m.–2:00 p.m. in the Ronald Tutor Center Grand Ballroom.
Faculty Award Winners, 2005-Present
A comprehensive list of all Faculty Award recipients from 2005 to present.
Marshall Faculty Publications, Awards, and Honors: October 2023
We are proud to highlight the amazing Marshall faculty who have been recognized this month for their leading-edge work and expertise.
Marshall Faculty Publications, Awards, and Honors: September 2023
We are thrilled to highlight our distinguished faculty on recently accepted and published research and awards.
Marshall Faculty Recognized for Teaching Excellence
Faculty recognized for exceptional teaching are honored with excellence awards and endowed teaching chair positions.
RESEARCH + PUBLICATIONS
New parenthood causes large decreases in labor market incomes for mothers but not fathers, a stylized fact known as the “child penalty.” We combine a simple household model with estimates of child penalties in heterosexual non-adopting, heterosexual adopting, and same-sex couples to better understand what causes the child penalty in heterosexual nonadopting couples. Our results largely rule out giving birth and the father’s advantage in the labor market as mechanisms, leaving preferences, gender norms, and discrimination as the main explanations. In addition, our paper provides novel evidence on the impact of children on labor market outcomes of adopting and same-sex couples.
We estimate production functions for cognition and health for children aged 1-12 in India, based on the Young Lives Survey. India has over 70 million children aged 0-5 who are at risk of developmental deficits. The inputs into the production functions
include parental background, prior child cognition and health, and child investments, which are taken as endogenous. Estimation is based on a nonlinear factor model, based on multiple measurements for both inputs and child outcomes. Our results
show an important effect of early health on child cognitive development, which then becomes persistent. Parental investments affect cognitive development at all ages, but more so for younger children. Investments also have an impact on health at early ages
only.
In this paper we use high quality data from two developing countries, Ethiopia and Peru, to estimate the production functions of human capital from age 1 to age 15. We characterize the nature of persistence and dynamic complementarities between two
components of human capital: health and cognition. We also explore the implications of different functional form assumptions for the production functions. We find that more able and higher income parents invest more, particularly at younger ages when investments
have the greatest impacts. These differences in investments by parental income lead to large gaps in inequality by age 8 that persist through age 15.
Quantile decomposition methods are used to study the determinants of the gender gap in self-employment earnings across the earnings distribution of four Sub-Saharan countries: the Republic of Congo, Ghana, Rwanda, and Tanzania. Techniques developed by Firpo, Fortin, and Lemieux (2007) are used to decompose the gap into a compositional effect (the part of the earnings gap that can be explained by observable factors) and a structural effect (the part of the gap that can be explained by returns to those factors, suggestive of discrimination) at various quantiles of the income distribution. While, in all countries and all points of the wage distribution, compositional effects help explain gender gaps in self-employment earnings, the majority of the wage gap is due to structural effects (with the exception of low income earners in the Republic of Congo). Still, the relative importance of specific compositional factors and the specific contribution of structural factors varies across countries and at different points of the income distribution within countries. There is some evidence of a glass-ceiling effect in the Republic of Congo and Tanzania but not in Ghana and Rwanda. These results suggest that discrimination is influenced by local conditions and that there is no single model of earnings gaps that can explain gender gaps in earning in sub-Saharan Africa.
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