ESSAYS ON LABOR ECONOMICS

Abstract

This thesis consists of three essays in labor economics. The first chapter examines the gender gap in examination performance in response to competitive and performance shocks. By using a unique dataset from the College Entrance Examination in China, We find that females perform worse than males and are more response to shocks under pressure. The second chapter investigates the effect of interruption on workers' subsequent productivity using plausibly exogenous incidents of machine breakdown. Using a dataset from a plastic printing company in China, we find that individual worker productivity declines following a workday with machine breakdown. The last chapter provides the first evidence about how temperature affects worker productivity from a manufacturing firm in a non-climate-controlled environment in China. Using the exogenous day-to-day variations in temperature, we find an inverted U-shaped effect of the daily maximum temperature on worker productivity.