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Category Archives: J30

Analysis of the Impact of Gender and Age of Protagonists in Top-Grossing Films from 2000-2019 on Film Success

By Daniella Welton

Abstract
The gender wage gap is prominent in many fields of work, but it is especially prevalent among actors in the film industry. According to the U.S. Department of Labor, as of 2019 female annual workers were earning about 82.3% of their male counterparts. In a study of feature films released from 1980 to 2015, females were making only 56% of their male counterparts on average; this gap also has been shown to increase as female actors get older (Blau & Kahn, 2017; De Pater et al., 2014; Izquierdo Sanchez & Navarro Paniagua, 2017). In this paper I investigate the relationship between the gender and age of protagonists in the film industry and film success through a series of three regressions with film success defined as film total gross, critic reviews, and audience reviews. My data set is composed of 100 top-grossing films from each year 2000-2019. Through my statistical analysis I did not find any evidence that the gender or age of the protagonist influences film success. Thus my results do not show any evidence that the gender wage gap could be related to differences in film success.

Professor Genna Miller, Faculty Advisor
Professor Kent Kimbrough, Seminar Advisor

JEL Codes: J16, J30, J70, J71

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Short and Long-Term Impacts of a Large-Scale Natural Disaster on Individual Labor Outcomes: Evidence from the 2004 Indian Ocean Tsunami

By Tony sun

Abstract
Natural disasters are often highly disruptive to the livelihoods of impacted populations. This paper investigates the effects of the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami on male wages and labor supply from its immediate aftermath into the long run. Using fixed effects models that account for individual-specific heterogeneity, I find evidence of significant real wage declines for workers from heavily damaged areas that persist beyond the short-term. This long-term wage effect contrasts with previous literature, particularly in the context of relatively less severe disasters. Male workers also increased their hours-of-work following the tsunami, which suggests reliance on labor markets to smooth income losses and shifted their labor towards less disrupted industries. Additionally, I document the heterogeneity of tsunami impact on wages and hours-of-work by birth cohort and education, as well as by industry and sector of employment.

Professor Duncan Thomas, Faculty Advisor
Professor Michelle P. Connolly, Honors Seminar Instructor

JEL classification: J2; J21; J30; O10; Q54

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The Effect of Marriage on the Wages of Americans: Gender and Generational Differences

By William Song and Theresa Tong

A substantial body of literature on the wage effects of marriage finds that married American men earn anywhere from 10% to 40% higher wages than unmarried men on average, while married American women earn up to 7% less than unmarried women, even after controlling for traits such as background, education, and number of children. Because this literature focuses heavily on men born in a single time period, we study both men and women in two different generational cohorts of Americans (Baby Boomers and Millennials) from the National Longitudinal Surveys of Youth to examine how the wage effects of marriage differ between genders and across time. Using a fixed effects approach, we find that Millennial women—but not Baby Boomer women—experience an increase in wages after marriage, and we replicate the finding from the literature that men experience an increase in wages after marriage as well. However, after controlling for wage trajectory-based selection into marriage by using a modified fixed effects approach that allows wage trajectories to vary by individual, we find that the wage effects of marriage are no longer statistically significant for any group in our data, suggesting that the wage differences between married and unmarried individuals found in previous studies are primarily a result of selection.

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Advisors: Professor Marjorie McElroy, Professor Michelle Connolly | JEL Codes: C33; D13; J12; J13; J22; J30

Questions?

Undergraduate Program Assistant
Matthew Eggleston
dus_asst@econ.duke.edu

Director of the Honors Program
Michelle P. Connolly
michelle.connolly@duke.edu