About Yana Gallen

Yana Gallen is an assistant professor at the University of Chicago Harris School of Public Policy. She received a PhD in economics from Northwestern University in 2016. She is a labor economist studying the gender wage gap. Her research focuses on understanding the sources of the gender pay gap---preferences, discrimination, or productivity? She is also interested in the impact of family friendly policies on the labor market, particularly looking at indirect or unanticipated effects of policy reforms. Many of her projects use Danish register data linking workers and firms. Her current work focuses on the savings and career decisions of household before they know their preferences concerning child-rearing.

Working Papers

• The Labor Market Returns to Delaying Pregnancy.  (with Juanna S. Joensen, Eva Rye Johansen, and Gregory F. Veramendi). 
• Informed Choices: Gender Gaps in Career Advice. (with Melanie Wasserman). Reject and Resubmit at Review of Economic Studies
• The effect of parental leave extensions on firms and coworkers. The University of Chicago Harris School of Public Policy, Working Paper, May 24, 2018.
• Incentives, Distortions, and Peers (with Trevor Gallen, Steven Levitt, and John List).

Published Papers

• Motherhood and the Gender Productivity Gap. Accepted at the Journal of the European Economic Association.
• Does Information Affect Homophily? (with Melanie Wasserman). Accepted at Journal of Public Economics.
• Do Male and Female Students Use Networks Differently? (with Melanie Wasserman). AEA Papers and Proceedings. 111 (2021). 
• The labor market gender gap in Denmark: Sorting out the past 30 years (with Rune Lesner and Rune Vejlin). Labour Economics. 56 (2019). 
• Charitable donations are more responsive to stock market booms than busts (with John List). Economics Letters. 110 (2011).