Professor Matthias Doepke, London School of Economics

“The Political Economy of Laws to `Protect' Women”
Thursday, 21 March. 3 p.m.
Room 356 Gilbert Scott Building

Abstract

During the first half of the 20th century, the US introduced state laws that imposed restrictions on women's labor market opportunities. This so-called `protective legislation' included minimum wage laws for women, maximum hours laws, requirements to provide chairs for female employees, and restrictions on working the night shift. Eventually, these laws were lifted in the 1960s and 1970s through a series of Acts and Supreme Court rulings, such as the Equal Pay Act of 1963 and Title VII of the Civil Rights Act in 1964. In this paper, we investigate the political economy of both the introduction and the repeal of these laws. Specifically, we investigate the hypothesis that labor market competition from women was the main driver of political change. To do so, we first use a political economy model to spell out the mechanism. Second, we show that when calibrated to US data, the model explains both the rise and fall of protective labor legislation remarkably well. Third, we use new and comprehensive cross-state data to provide empirical evidence for the mechanism and contrast these findings to alternative explanations.

Bio

Matthias Doepke is the Gerald F. and Marjorie G. Fitzgerald Professor of Economic History at Northwestern University and Professor of Economics at the London School of Economics. Doepke's research explores how decisions taken within families shape macroeconomic outcomes and how, in turn, economic conditions feed back into what families do. His research has been published in leading international journals including the American Economic Review, Econometrica, the Journal of Political Economy, the Quarterly Journal of Economics, and the Review of Economic Studies. He is coauthor (with Fabrizio Zilibotti) of the bestselling book “Love, Money, and Parenting: How Economics Explains the Way We Raise Our Kids.” Doepke is a Co-Editor of the Journal of the European Economic Association, a recipient of an Alfred P. Sloan Research Fellowship, and a Fellow of the Econometric Society.

For further information, please contact business-school-research@glasgow.ac.uk

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First published: 12 March 2024

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