Abdelrahman Amer

Around 40% of employees in Canada work within 5 km of their place of residence, highlighting workers' preference for proximity to workplace. I leverage a subway expansion in Vancouver during the 2010 Winter Olympics, and show that workers who gained improved access to the subway network experienced an increase in earnings by 1.5-2%. The effect is driven by job switchers who travel farther to new employers. To interpret these findings, I build, identify, and estimate a two-sided labor market matching model featuring wage-posting, commuting costs, and residential choice. Using the estimated model I replicate the reduced form effects, and show that the expansion reallocated workers to more productive firms. I also show that labor market concentration dropped by 10-35% in treated areas due to the expansion. Separately, I use the model to shed light on the role of preference for proximity in shaping the spatial distribution of wage markdowns.

Performance evaluations in interviews are central to employment decisions.We combine two field experiments, administrative data and video analysis tostudy the sources of gender gaps in interview evaluations. Leveraging 60,000 mock interviews on a platform for software engineers, we find that code quality ratings are 12 percent of a standard deviation lower for women. This gap persists after controlling for an objective measure of code quality. Providing evaluators with automated performance measures does not reduce gender gaps. Comparing blind to non-blind evaluations without live interaction reveals no gender gap in either case. In contrast, gaps widen with longer personal interaction and are larger among evaluators from regions with stronger implicit gender bias. Video analysis shows that women apologize more; and interviewers are more condescending and harsher with them. Both correlate with lower ratings. Our findings highlight how interpersonal dynamics can introduce bias into evaluations that otherwise rely on objective metrics.