Gender Earnings Differentials Among College Administrators

This analysis examines gender pay gap among the top five salaried individuals at private higher education institutions. We find a 13.0 percent average pay disadvantage for women versus men. This pay gap can be decomposed into a 10.4 percent differential owing to differences in the types of institutions and occupations that women hold relative to men and a 2.6 percent unexplained earnings differential.     

Canadian Public-Private Sector Earnings Differentials, 1970–1980

This paper examines changes in the public-private sector wage gap in Canada between 1970 and 1980. The results show that the gross earnings advantage of both male and female government employees rose over the decade. For men, the increase was largely attributable to improved wage-determining characteristics, especially education, experience, and occupational distribution. For women, the increase occurred mainly because of a rise in economic rents in the form of a constant wage premium.     

Race and Post-Displacement Earnings Among High-Tech Workers

This study examines racial variations in post-layoff earnings among a cohort of workers displaced in 1985 from Silicon Valley's high-technology industries. The analysis shows that blacks and Hispanics suffered greater earnings losses than non-Hispanic whites, and that this racial disparity occurred both among those who found other jobs within the high-tech sector and among those who were reemployed outside the high-tech sector. There were no statistical differences in outcomes between Asians and non-Hispanic whites.     

Earnings Growth Among Young Less-Educated Business Owners

Using data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (NLSY), I examine the earnings patterns of young less-educated business owners and make comparisons with young less-educated wage/salary workers. Estimates from fixed-effects earnings regressions indicate that the self-employed experience faster earnings growth on average than wage/salary workers after a few initial years of slower growth. I also find some evidence suggesting that a relatively high percentage of less-educated business owners, especially men, experience either rapid earnings growth or large annual losses.     

Privatization, City Residency, and Black-White Earnings Differentials: Evidence from the Public Transit Sector

Becker's theory on the economics of discrimination suggests that enhanced competition creates a business environment that discourages employers from paying racial earnings differences. This study tests this hypothesis by examining black-white earnings differentials for public transit bus drivers for pre- and post-privatization periods. The findings reveal an erosion of the racial earnings differential in the post-privatization period which is consistent with the Becker hypothesis. Public transit black union drivers earned more than their white counterparts prior to privatization. City residency accounts for 36 percent of this premium. However, the city-residency earnings advantage and the black-white union premium declinedappreciably in the post-privatization period.     

Language Skills and the Earnings Distribution Among Child Immigrants

In this paper, we estimate the language effects on the earnings distribution among child immigrants. Utilizing U.S. Census data, we find: (1) there exists a larger heterogeneity in language premiums across the earnings distribution, and the patterns change over time (2) occupation and education channels explain most of the language effects and the large heterogeneity in them. However, the importance of these two channels has decreased over time.     

What Can Explain the Increase in Earnings Inequality Among Males?

Increases in the inequality of earnings among male workers since the late sixties have been attributed primarily to shifts in employment from goods-producing to service-producing activities and the baby-boom cohort's entry into the labor market. This paper provides empirical estimates of the magnitude of these and other potential causes of the increase in earnings inequality from 1967 to 1985. The results show that changes related to the age composition of the labor force and to the industrial composition of the labor force account for only a portion of the increase in inequality. Most of the increase in unexplained by either factor. Other contributing factors include a rise in the return to education, a change in the relationship between age and education among males, and a decline in the marriage rate among younger males.     

Contributions in Industrial Organization,by Linguistic Groups,in Selected Journals

This study evaluates the relative importance ofarticles in Industrial Organization publishedduring 1991–1996 in major generalist or specializedjournals, either english or french, using the 1991J.E.L. classification system. Contributions areregrouped according to the type of article:theoretical analysis; industrial policy; industrystudies. A specialization progress indicator (SPI)shows the trends of the editorial policy, while a rateof multiple reference index (RMR) has been introducedto examine the degree of relation between those threecategories and used as a proxy of the editorialpreferences towards the type of treatment of thesubject usually expected by the journal.     

Public- and Private-Sector Wage Differentials in Canada Revisited

Using a variety of techniques, we estimate the wage premium for federal, provincial, and municipal public-sector employees in Canada. We find that females in the public sector are paid a wage premium, with federal government workers enjoying the highest rents, followed by local and provincial public-sector employees. Estimates for males suggest that rent payments are comparably less, but results are inconclusive.     

Unemployment-Risk Differentials Between Immigrant and Native Workers in Sweden

This article analyzes the subsequent unemployment risk of a sample of Swedish employees in 1991. We find that non-European immigrants face an unemployment risk twice as large as the corresponding risk for native workers despite controls for employee characteristics, the 1991 wage rate, and sorting across establishments with varying unemployment risks. Although all employees enjoy higher job security with higher seniority, large differences in unemployment risk by region of birth remain for workers with similar seniority levels. This suggests that labor unions and employers deviate from seniority rules established by the Swedish Security of Employment Act in favor of native workers.     

Wage Differentials in São Paulo's Labor Force

To explain the variation in the salaries of specialized workers in São Paulo's industries of transformation, we have used a model made up of five variables: the person's occupational preparation, the influence he may exert within the company because of his occupation, his age, his seniority in the company, and his time on the job. The data obtained for the total sample show clearly that the status of the worker within the company (occupational influence) as well as his occupational preparation and age, are powerful partial determinants of salary levels in São Paulo. On the whole, training is the most powerful of these variables because it has a strong direct effect on wages and because it has an indirect effect on wages through its impact on occupational influence level. Variables indicating experience in the company (seniority) and in the present job are almost negligible. The results suggest the presence of a modern industrial structure where one's technical preparation and position in the company are closely related and where these factors weigh far more heavily than experience on the job and in the company. Except for age, the viable variables used here are special cases of major status dimension: wealth (wages); power (occupational influence); informational status (occupatibnal preparation or education). Occupational prestige was also investigated and, in a stepwise regression, was found useless as a determinant of wages. In this research we explore, possibly for the first time, the use of a power variable, occupational influence, as a determinant of a reward variable, hourly wages. Though theoretically promising, power has previously been remarkably resistant to empirical analysis. Although our use of occupational influence has been successful, the introduction of new variables is always risky. We hope that others will conduct studies leading either to refinements in the use of this and similar indicators or to their rejection. Also, recent publications report only a small effect of most known variables on individual income differentials in the United States. Perhaps adding occupational influence might help. It is worth repeating that in the present data-set, this variable alone explains just about as much variance in hourly wages (23 per cent) as a set of 13 repressors does on job income (27 per cent) in data analyzed by Spaeth. The whole set of five variables is, of course, more effective here, with 36 per cent of the variance explained. These differences may be due to many factors. It would seem that education may be more influential in Brazil—or at least in this sample —than in the United States. Clearly, educated personnel are in shorter supply than in the United States, and the relative rewards may be greater. If this is true, the rewards for education should decrease as Brazil's education system improves. In any case, by its clear elimination of job experience and seniority, and its strong support for occupational training, occupational influence level, and age, we hope the present work may add to the growing body of evidence regarding the determinants of wage differentials, especially in Brazil and perhaps in other dynamic third world sectors.     

Compensating Wage Differentials in the Union and Nonunion Sectors

This paper tests for the existence of structurally different compensating payments in the union and nonunion sectors of the economy. Significant differences may stem from the different mechanisms by which such payments are determined: markets are the primary mechanism in the nonunion sector, while Political processes play a major role in the union sector. The empirical results provide tentative support for the structural differences hypothesis; They also reveal an absence of positive and significant compensating payments in nonunion labor markets.     

Immigration, Ethnic Wage Differentials and Output Pay in Canada

Recent work suggests that ethnic minority wage differentials in Canada are smaller among those receiving performance pay and that the returns to performance pay are larger for ethnic minorities. This article adds to these findings. First, it demonstrates critical gender differences. The earlier findings are generated almost exclusively by males, as we show that the minority wage differential is small or zero for women in both the time rate sector and the performance pay sector. Second, accounting for immigration and language tends to move the ethnic wage differential in favour of minorities. Minority women on output pay are shown to earn more than non-minority women. While the differential often remains negative for minority men on time rates, it becomes insignificant in our most narrow comparison.     

Earnings Inequality and Unions in Canada

This paper reports research examining differences in the earnings distributions of unionized and non–unionized workers and the impact of union status on the likelihood of a worker being in each region of the earnings distribution. Average earnings of unionized workers are shown to be higher than those of non–union workers in the first four quintiles, but lower than average earnings of non–unionized workers in the top quintile. Union effects are greatest among workers situated in the lower and middle regions of the distribution, and benefit workers who are typically disadvantaged in the labour market.     

Are Union Wage Differentials in the United States Falling?

This paper addresses several estimation and specification issues in estimating union wage differentials in the United States over the last two decades. Estimates provide strong evidence of a decline in the differential for women. For men, the differential appears to have declined for a person with overall average characteristics, but not for a male with characteristics of the average unionized male.     

Rhetoric in Economic Research: The Case of Gender Wage Differentials

Scientific rhetoric can have a profound impact on the perception of research; it can also drive and direct further research efforts. What determines whether results are discussed in a neutral or a judgmental way? How precise and convincing do results have to be so that authors call for significant policy changes? These questions are in general difficult to answer, because rhetoric on the one hand, and content and methodology of the paper on the other, cannot be separated easily. We therefore used a unique example to examine this question empirically: the analysis of gender wage differentials. Here, the Blinder–Oaxaca decomposition represents a standard research method that compares male and female earnings, holding observable factors constant. We analyzed close to 200 papers to investigate what drives authors to talk about discrimination, whether and when they call for policy activism, or when they are more hesitant to do so. Our results show that American authors are more reluctant to refer to discrimination. So are women, but only with respect to the titles of their papers. Furthermore, we find that the better the data and method used in a paper, the more likely an author is to assign his/her estimate of unequal wages to discrimination. The contrary is true the higher the prestige of the author or the research outlet.