Welcome

I am a lecturer at University of Canberra. In July 2025, I will be joining Monash University Indonesia as Assistant Professor (tenure track). I hold PhD in Economics from the Australian National University.

My research interest lies between labour economics, gender economics and development economics. My main research topic is lifetime labour market outcomes and gender issues in Indonesia and Australia. I am PhD candidate in economics at Research School of Economics, The Australian National University.

Latest Resume

Research highlights

Trade and gendered labor outcomes: evidence from changing export demand in Indonesia

with Ridho Izzati & Donny Pasaribu

We present new evidence on the gendered consequences of trade, specifically examining shifts in foreign demand. We construct panel mean-aggregated local labor market outcomes for women at the provincial level. Our Two-Stage Least Squares (2SLS) approach suggests that an increase in foreign demand shock has a limited impact on reducing gender gaps and negatively affects total employment and the share of female-dominant sectors. This adverse employment effect is primarily driven by resource-based sectors, typically male-dominant industries. Further investigation reveals that the most affected women workers are characterized as married and low-educated. These results offer crucial insights into trade and women’s empowerment: relying on resource-basedcommodities does little to empower women and trade policies should not solely focus on export activities in their narratives.

Intergenerational link in women employment: evidence from Indonesia

I investigate the existence of an intergenerational link between women’s labour supply decisions in Indonesia using rich large-scale longitudinal data known as the Indonesia Family Life Survey (IFLS). I employ a permanent component approach (Chadwick and Solon, 2002; Galassi et al., 2019) to estimate the intergenerational correlation between the mother’s lifetime employment and the daughter’s lifetime employment. I find that a mother’s employment affects her daughter’s employment decision in the future.This intergenerational link coefficient is equivalent to more than two additional years of education. I provide evidence that the role-model effects and occupation-specific human capital transfer are the main plausible mechanism behind the intergenerational correlation. The study highlights the challenges of any efforts to improve the female labour supply given a slowly changing social norms society.

Unlucky and scarred: long-term consequences of labour market entry condition in Indonesia

I exploit the fact that since the Asian Financial Crisis hit in 1997/1998, Indonesia suffered a spike in the unemployment rate that prolonged for almost a decade. I collect and harmonize a long series of Indonesian labour market surveys (SAKERNAS) spanning over 30 years to construct a pseudo-panel cohort of new labour market entrants from 1990 to 2019. Following Kahn (2010) and Oreopoulos et al. (2012), I exploit exogenous temporal variation of the unemployment rate at the national level and province level to test the existence of scarring effects. I find evidence of a scarring effect where a 1 percentage point increase in the unemployment rate at the year of labour market entrance causes about 15% loss in probability to be employed full-time and about 26% potential monthly income loss. I find women and men share similar burdens in terms of negative employment effects, but larger negative income effects for women.

Labour market effects of bushfires and floods in Australia: a gendered perspective

with Josiah Hickson | Economic Records Volume 98, Issue S1 pages 1-25

We study the labour market effects of bushfires and floods within Australia over the past two decades, focusing on gender as a determinant of vulnerability. Whilst floods unambiguously lifted the labour supply of both genders (creating around 13,500 jobs per year), the likelihood of female employment is particularly vulnerable to bushfires – lowering by 1.6 percentage points (or around 5,000 jobs per year). This effect is partially explained by industry sector, with bushfires lifting overall male employment through industries including mining and transport, whilst reducing more female dominated services-sector participation. We also examine intrahousehold dynamics, finding strongevidence for an ‘added worker’ effect.

[Working paper version]

Land of the (Un)Fair Go? Peer gender norms and gender gaps in the Australian labour market

with Josiah Hickson | TTPI Working Paper Series

Australian attitudes towards women remain more conservative than in many other OECD countries. We examine the effect of these norms on female labour outcomes and intrahousehold dynamics using a peer effects model and nearly two decades of longitudinal household survey data. Our results indicate that conservative gender norms are costly to individual women and are an important determinant of gender inequality, resulting for women in lower lifetime rates of labour force participation and suppressed lifetime earnings trajectories. Estimated effects are large in magnitude: shifting norms to be one standard deviation more egalitarian would eliminate three-quarters of the gender gap in employment and around two-thirds of the gender pay gap. More egalitarian peer norms are also associated with increased household incomes, a more equitable division of unpaid domestic work, and greater overall life satisfaction.

Contact:

University of Canberra, Building 11
Room 11B23
1 Kirinari St, Bruce ACT 2617

Email: joseph.marshan@canberra.edu.au | joseph.marshan@anu.edu.au
Twitter: @josephmarshan
Linkedin: jmarshan Google Scholar: Joseph Marshan