Natural groups and economic characteristics as driving forces of wage discrimination

We investigate whether the origin of an employee provides different motives for wage discrimination in gift-exchange experiments with students and migrant workers in China. In a lab and an internet experiment, subjects in the role of employers can condition their wages on the employees׳ home provinces. The resulting systematic differences in wages can be linked to natural groups and economic characteristics of the provinces. In-group favoritism increases wages for employees who share the same origin as the employer, while an increased probability of being matched with an employee with a different ethnicity reduces wages. Furthermore, wages in the laboratory increase with the actual wage level in the employees׳ home province. Nevertheless, employees׳ effort is not influenced by these variables; only the wage paid in the experiment influences effort.     

Compulsory Superannuation and Labour Market Responses

Compulsory contributions to superannuation have significant second round effects on labour market outcomes. The effects of employer, employee and government contributions are compared and contrasted for markets with different degrees of wage flexibility. With a flexible wage, the market wage adjusts to offset most of the initial effects of the superannuation levies. However, compulsion means that many employees perceive the present value of the future retirement income to be less than the levy. The levies as a form of tax on labour lead to lower overall remuneration for employees and lower employment     

Personality and the gender wage gap

In this study, we investigate whether personality traits contribute towards a better understanding of the reasons for the gender wage gap. We explore whether two of the personality factors put forward by Bowles et al. (2001) as likely to be incentive enhancing in the employer–employee relationship can explain the difference in wages for women and men. These are (1) personal self efficacy (Locus of Control (LoC)) and (2) time preference. We also study the role of the so called Big Five personality traits (extraversion, emotional stability, agreeableness, openness intellect and conscientiousness), which have been associated with earnings in several recent studies. Using a sample of Dutch employees, we found that 11.5% of the observed gender wage gap could be ascribed to differences in the personality trait scores (mainly in agreeableness and intellect), while less than 0.5% could be ascribed to gender differences in the returns to the traits. The addition of personality traits to a traditional human capital model reduces the unexplained part of the gender wage gap from 75.2% to 62.7%. We therefore conclude that these traits represent a valuable addition to the model.     

Decomposing Gender Wage Differentials Using Quantile Regression: Evidence from the Lebanese Banking Sector

This paper investigates gender pay inequality in the labor market of a developing country. Our empirical investigation uses data derived from a sample of employees in the Lebanese banking sector for the years 2008 and 2014. Using Blinder-Oaxaca decomposition, the results reveal that the unexplained component of the gender wage gap, attributed to discrimination, represents a substantial share of the total gap. A surprising result is that the contribution of human capital to the gender wage gap is negative, suggesting that wage discrimination is the main explanation for the gap. Utilizing the Machado-Mata methodology to decompose the wage gap across the entire wage distribution, our findings indicate that the unexplained component of the raw gender wage gap is more pronounced at the low and middle ranges of the distribution. However, the explained component dominates at the top of the distribution, suggesting that earnings gaps are fully explained by observed characteristics.     

Employee share ownership in a unionised duopoly

Profit sharing schemes have been analysed assuming Cournot competition and decentralised wage negotiations, and it has been found that firms share profits in equilibrium. This paper analyses a different remuneration system: employee share ownership. We find that whether firms choose to share ownership or not depends on both the type of competition in the product market and the way in which workers organise to negotiate wages. If wage setting is decentralised, under duopolistic Cournot competition both firms share ownership. If wage setting is centralised, only one firm shares ownership if the degree to which goods are substitutes takes an intermediate value; otherwise, the two firms share ownership. In this case, if the union sets the same wage for all workers neither firm shares ownership. Therefore, centralised wage setting discourages share ownership. Finally, under Bertrand competition neither firm shares ownership regardless of how workers are organised to negotiate wages.     

What is the right profile for getting a job? A stated choice experiment of the recruitment process

We study the recruitment behaviour of Swedish employers using data from a stated choice experiment. In the experiment, the employers are first asked to describe an employee who recently and voluntarily left the firm and then to choose between two hypothetical applicants to invite to a job interview or to hire as a replacement for their previous employee. The two applicants differ with respect to characteristics such as gender, age, education, work experience, ethnicity, religious beliefs, family situation, weight, and health, but otherwise have similar characteristics as the previous employee. Our results show that employers prefer not to recruit applicants who are old, non-European, Muslim, Jewish, obese, have several children, or have a history of sickness absence. We also calculate the reduction in wage costs needed to make employers indifferent between applicants with and without these characteristics, and find that wage costs would have to be reduced by up to 50 % for applicants with some characteristics.     

Labor markets and mating markets: Using taxes to reduce the male–female pay gap

Recently, Frank and McKenzie (J Bioecon 8(3):269–274, 2006) pointed out that beside discrimination, there is a further reason for a wage gap between males and females: If females value partner wages more than males in the mating market, this would increase the pay gap. In this paper, it is analyzed whether there exist policies that may improve the position of females and males from a distributional point of view without destroying the signal females want about the labor market success of males. First-best redistribution policies require the knowledge of the male and female wage preferences. Because this information is not available, a first-best redistribution policy seems infeasible. As an alternative policy, a differentiated wage tax is considered which is less information demanding than a first-best policy. It is shown that a welfare increasing wage tax scheme does exist and that an adequately chosen wage tax scheme may decrease the gender wage gap without destroying the desired signal of wages for labor market success.     

Gender segregation and earnings differences in the Spanish labour market

This article analyses the effects of different types of gender segregation on the gender wage differential for the Spanish labour market. Matched employer–employee data from a sample of 226,535 workers are used. These workers are employed in 61 occupations within 26,492 establishments in 51 different industries. Workers belonging to the same industry, establishment or job share common factors which cannot be observed and these factors affect wages. If these unobservable variables are correlated with the explanatory variables, their estimated effects will be biased. For this reason, we estimate the effects of each type of gender segregation on the wage gap using a robust specification to these possible correlations. We obtain that industrial segregation by gender explains a lower part of the wage gap between men and women than previous researches found using standard regressions, while the contributions of establishment segregation and occupational segregation within each establishment are greater.     

The Effects of Gender Differences in Career Interruptions on the Gender Wage Gap in Spain

The aim of this paper is to measure the influence of past employment interruptions on current wages and to analyze how these interruptions contribute to the gender wage gap. The discontinuity in labor trajectories of Spanish employees from 2005 to 2010 is examined by measuring the duration of unemployment periods from employees’ first Social Security affiliation to the last job at which they were employed. Through the use of the database “Muestra Continua de Vidas Laborales” (MCVL), the estimated gender wage gap is found to be 13.1 percent. Introducing an index of interruptions as an explanatory variable, the results show that interruptions have a negative impact on both men's and women's wages. These interruptions explain 7.4 percent of the daily gender wage gap in Spain, primarily because women experience more interruptions in employment than men.     

Employee treatment and corporate fraud

This paper examines the association between a firm’s relations with its employees and its likelihood of committing fraud. We find that firms treating their employees fairly (as measured by employee treatment index) have a lower likelihood of committing fraud since labor-friendly firms have incentives to signal their willingness to fulfill implicit contracts and maintain long-term relationships with employees. Further analysis shows that employee involvement and cash profit-sharing are the most important components in employee treatment to determine our results. Moreover, we show that the negative association between employee treatment and fraud propensity is more prominent when a firm is in a high-tech industry, when a firm in a less competitive industry, and when employees have less outside employment opportunities. Finally, we show that our results are not driven by the employee’s moral sensitivity or other labor related factors (i.e. labor wage, pension benefits, and labor union power).     

Endogenous schooling and the distribution of the gender wage gap

Previous studies on the gender wage gap have relied on OLS when estimating the wage equations. However, a number of recent studies, devoted to estimating the return to education, have shown that OLS may produce biased estimates for a number of reasons. As a consequence, previous results regarding the gender wage gap may also be biased. In this paper, we first estimate wage equations using a GMM procedure applied to panel data and then investigate the distribution of the gender wage gap. The results indicate that OLS may seriously overestimate the unexplained gender wage gap.First version received: October 2001/Final version accepted: July 2003     

Wage differentials by sector and gender: a quantile analysis for the Spanish case

This paper analyses existing wage differentials between workers in the public and private sectors and by gender in Spain. This analysis is run throughout the entire earnings distribution and observed wage differentials are decomposed into a part explained by differences in productive characteristics and a part due to differences in returns to such characteristics. Our results show that public sector workers tend to earn higher wages than private employees, although most of this sector wage gap is due to better public workers’ productive characteristics. A wage premium in favour of men is also found in both the public and private sectors, with the gender wage gap greater at the top of the earnings distribution.     

垂直薪酬差距对企业创新"质"与"量"的影响

创新不仅取决于管理层决策,而且与员工支持密不可分,那么垂直薪酬差距(管理层与员工的薪酬差距)如何影响企业创新？依据锦标赛理论和社会比较理论,以中国2007-2015年A股非金融上市公司为样本,进行Tobit实证检验。研究发现,垂直薪酬差距对企业创新发挥“锦标赛”激励作用,其中,对创新数量的促进效应在薪酬差距较低组显著,企业融资约束会反向调节垂直薪酬差距与企业创新的关系;薪酬差距中的管理层薪酬溢价能显著提升企业创新数量和质量,而员工薪酬溢价会显著降低企业创新数量,提升企业创新质量,并且对非国有企业更显著。据此提出优化企业薪酬设计、加大企业创新资金支持及人才建设等建议。     

部门选择对工资性别差距的影响：1988-2001年

基于1988-2001年的UHS数据库，本文首先研究的是男女部门选择分散程度（以Ducan分散指数来表示）和工资差距的趋势。结果发现，前者的趋势是先平稳、后下降、再上升，后者的趋势是先平稳、后上升、再下降。本文还利用Appleton分解方法研究了部门选择影响工资性别差距的具体程度，结果表明，除了中间的某些年份（1992-1996年），部门选择对工资性别差距的影响并不大，即使在那些特殊的年份，影响程度也不会超过20％。因此，缩小性别之间工资差距的关键是降低两者在部门内的工资差异。     

ECONOMIC TRANSITION AND THE GENDER EARNINGS GAP IN CHINESE INDUSTRY: THE ROLE OF FIRM CHARACTERISTICS

This paper analyzes the gender wage gap in the post‐reform Chinese industry using a unique employer‐employee matched dataset. The analysis shows that the sex‐related wage premiums at the firm level account for almost all the portion of the gender wage gap that is not explained by observed personal characteristics. It is found that firms which have a larger pay gap between men and women are more likely to operate in the market with fierce competition, subject to a hard budget constraint, adopt piece rates, and have a lower degree of employees' influence. (JEL I30, J16, J21, J64, J71, O10, R20)     

Does union membership reduce gender earnings differentials? Evidence from employer–employee matched data in China

This paper examines whether union membership reduces gender earnings differentials in the Chinese labour market using an employer–employee matched data set. We have three main findings. First, union membership helps reduce the gender differentials in hourly wage and monthly allowance, but not in monthly basic wage and yearly bonus. Second, ensuring that female workers receive overtime pay is one way by which union membership helps reduce the gender earnings differentials. Third, controlling for firm fixed effects reduces the effect of union membership on the gender gap in hourly wage and monthly allowance, which means that the unobserved firm characteristics might impact the effect of union membership on gender earnings differentials.     

Evidence on the glass ceiling effect in France using matched worker-firm data

In this article, we investigate the relevance of the glass ceiling hypothesis in France, according to which there exist larger gender wage gaps at the upper tail of the wage distribution. Using a matched worker-firm data set of about 1 30 000 employees and 14 000 employers, we estimate quantile regressions and rely on a principal component analysis to summarize information specific to the firms. Our different results show that accounting for firm-related characteristics reduces the gender earnings gap at the top of the distribution, but the latter still remains much higher at the top than at the bottom. Furthermore, a quantile decomposition shows that the gender wage gap is mainly due to differences in the returns to observed characteristics rather than in differences in characteristics between men and women.     

"Holding hands at midnight": The paradox of caring labor

Abstract

The gender wage gap in the United States narrowed considerably throughout the 1980s and then more slowly in the 1990s. Using a decomposition methodology and US Current Population Survey data, this study investigates the impact of deindustrialization's continuing shift in employment away from manufacturing to services on the US gender wage gap between 1990 and 2001. The study finds that the widening of the gender wage gap in the service sector caused a slowdown in the narrowing of the US gender wage gap. Within the service sector, two occupational elements affected the growing gender wage gap: women's entry into traditionally male occupations characterized by high wages and high gender wage differentials that resulted in the relative increase in men's wages compared to women's wages in these occupations.