Bio
Arnaud Maurel is an Associate Professor in the Department of Economics at Duke University. He is also a Research Associate at the NBER (Labor Studies) and IZA, a Co-Editor of Annals of Economics and Statistics, and Associate Editor at Quantitative Economics and Journal of Business and Economic Statistics. His research interests are in Labor Economics/Education and Microeconometrics. Most of his non-methodological work lies at the intersection between the economics of education and labor economics, with a focus on post-secondary education demand and occupational choices.His econometrics research focuses on the identification and estimation of selection and treatment effect models as well as models of occupational choice and job search, and on data combination issues applied in particular to subjective expectations data.
Our Conversation
While it was a little snowy last week, Professor Maurel was still kind enough to meet me on Zoom. During our talk, I learned so much about the more foundational parts of my independent study that have more long-term impacts. While it is a little out of the scope of my proposal, I think it shedded a lot of light on how vast some of the differences are from the beginning and how it can be shown in the life choices we make. Professor Maurel talked a lot about his research of the correlation between education and labor economics which provided a lot of insight into potential solutions for the future to address the gender disparities in certain industries.
I think one of the most interesting things we talked about was “risk aggression” which for those who don’t know, is how willing someone is to take a risk when it comes to decisions. Professor Maurel was telling me how women tend to choose choices that have less risk with them when it comes to education paths or career choices. Obviously this isn’t something that applies to all women but it’s certainly a trend that we’ve been seeing in the past. I think this also correlates to how we see less women in the finance industry which is associated with long, stressful hours that are demanding for many lives. Especially within corporate finance, there is a strong competitive drive to climb up the ladder and it often requires sacrifices that not everyone can or is willing to make for their lives. Another part of risk aggression was when it came to job searching.
When people receive jobs, it’s been seen that women often take the first one they are offered, instead of waiting for a better offer or better job.
Professor Arnaud Maurel (Duke)
I found this quite interesting and it also correlated with a few articles I had read in the past that corroborated this claim. In this CNBC article in 2020, it was said that 60% of women have never negotiated their job salary. But what was really interesting is that 72% of women would be willing to search for another job just to get a salary raise. Essentially, women would prefer to find another job rather than have a face to face conversation with employers to ask for a salary raise. I think this highlights a huge problem that societal constructs have created personas and personalities that are gender specific. Corporate workplaces need to start creating environments that are more conducive for open and clear dialogue, and being more inclusive of women.
As a student, this has opened my eyes to how important self-advocacy is and I am thankful to say that I think it’s one of the skills I’ve honed and picked up over the years. This is a good lesson for me and anyone in the future that it’s better to ask and be rejected than to never know.
