We are pleased to share that Professor Alicia Sasser Modestino has recently had the following two articles published in leading peer-reviewed journals.
No Longer Qualified? Changes in the Supply and Demand for Skills within Occupations
Authors: Alicia Sasser Modestino, Mary A. Burke, and Bledi Taska
Publication: ILR Review, SAGE Journals, 2026
Although labor market mismatch often refers to imbalances between supply and demand across occupations, mismatch within occupations can arise when skill requirements change rapidly, with important consequences for workers and the labor market. Using 200 million U.S. online job postings, the authors show educational upskilling varied considerably by occupation during the Great Recession, persisted well beyond the initial recovery, and was correlated with rising demand for software skills. Developing an adjusted mismatch index, they demonstrate how the educational composition of vacancies becomes misaligned with that of unemployed workers within occupations, decreasing aggregate matching efficiency. Among occupations with persistent educational upskilling, the authors document lower job-finding rates for non-college workers, suggesting rapidly changing educational requirements create a moving target for unemployed workers. The findings help reconcile prior studies showing little evidence of labor market mismatch with employer reports of skilled worker shortages after the Great Recession.
Gender Differences in Economics Seminars
Authors: Pascaline Dupas, Amy Handlan, Alicia Sasser Modestino, Muriel Niederle, Mateo Seré, Haoyu Sheng, Justin Wolfers, and the Seminar Dynamics Collective
Publication: American Economic Review, Vol. 116, No. 2 (pp. 749–789), February 2026
This study assesses whether men and women are treated differently when presenting economics research. Drawing on data across thousands of seminars, job market talks, and conference presentations, the authors used human judgment and audio-processing algorithms to measure the number, tone, and type of interruptions. Within a seminar series, women are interrupted more than men — a finding that holds when controlling for characteristics of the presenter, paper, and audience. Interruptions that are negative in tenor or tone, or that cut off the presenter mid-sentence, increase for women presenters. The study also finds greater engagement of female audience members with female presenters, suggesting a potential role model effect.
