measuring and decomposing the gender pay gap a new frontier approach abstract the gender pay gap measures the differences in the wages earned by female workers when compared to male workers accurately measuring the gender pay gap is an important exercise in order to assess how far we are from the ideal of equal pay for work of equal value determining the different sources of the gender pay gap is also very important in order to design appropriate policies for eliminating this gap we develop an enhanced method to measure and decompose the gender pay gap this method is based on the data envelopment analysis dea technique and on the malmquist index mi we use dea and the mi to construct an index reflecting an adjusted measure of the gender pay gap taking into account multiple productive characteristics and multiple types of pay furthermore we propose a decomposition of the gender pay gap into four components same gender pay gap cross gender frontier gap magnitude productive characteristics bias and pay package bias the method is applied to data relative to 15 712 men and 17 175 women working as business and administration associate professionals in the finance and insurance industry in 20 countries the results reveal the existence of a gender pay gap in all countries and that the value of the gap and of its components vary considerably between countries requiring different policies to tackle it

the political economy of gender explaining cross national variation in the gender division of labor and the gender voting gap mainstream political economy has tended to treat the family as a unit when examining the distributional consequences of labor market institutions and of public policy in a world with high divorce rates we argue that this simplification is more likely to obscure than to instruct we find that labor market opportunities for women which vary systematically with the position of countries in the international division of labor and with the structure of the welfare state affect women s bargaining power within the family and as a result can explain much of the cross country variation in the gender division of labor as well as the gender gap in political preferences

the structure of the female male wage differential is it who you are what you do or where you work the efficacy of policies to narrow the malelfemale wage differential depends partly on the size of the portion s of the gap targeted previous research finds no between sex wage gap within occupations within employer job cell this is the first study to disentangle segregation by occupation from that based on employer or on job cell in five industries controlling for other forms of segregation occupational segregation produces a gap of 11 percent manufacturing to 26 percent services the wage gaps from establishment and job cell segregation are about 6 percent each since comparable worth acts on the occupation and job cell components it has a potentially large impact

does marriage really make men more productive this paper presents new descriptive evidence regarding marital pay premiums earned by white males longitudinal data indicate that wages rise after marriage and that cross sectional marriage premiums appear to result from a steepening of the earnings profile data from a company personnelfile that includes information on job grades and supervisor performance ratings reveal large marital status pay differences within a narrow range of occupations managers and professionals and environments a single firm married workers tend to be located in higher paying job grades there are very small pay differentials within grades married men receive higher performance ratings than single men as a result they are much more likely to be promoted controlling for rated performance however eliminates the promotion differential sanders korenman is an assistant professor of economics and public affairs at princeton university and is a faculty associate of the office of population research at princeton university and a research affiliate of the national bureau of economic research nber david neumark is an assistant professor of economics at the university of pennsylvania and a research affiliate of the nber korenman wishes to acknowledge the hewlett foundation and the harvard university center for population studies for financial support the authors are grateful to james medofffor making available an extract from the company personnelfile questions regarding data availability should be directed to professor james

the capital structure and investment decisions of the small owner managed firm some exploratory issues in the burgeoning literature on small firm financing the problem of underidentification in respect to the supply of and demand for capital has not been fully resolved in an attempt to progress this issue the current paper looks at some of the issues influencing the demand for finance in small firms which are owner managed the paper is primarily exploratory in nature and argues that a greater emphasis might usefully be placed on the cost of capital dimension in future research into small business financing in particular it is suggested that where the objective of an owner manager is to maintain control of the firm interdependent investment and financing strategies may be chosen to control the small firms cost of capital this in turn indicates that the tendency for some small firms to invest sub optimally and exhibit slower than average growth may not be primarily determined by limitations on their supplies of finance on the demand side it may well be that in addition to equity aversion a suboptimal capital structure decision is made in the form of a reduced demand for debt in other words given the level of equity that an owner manager chooses debt may not be fully expanded to the capacity limit consistent with value maximisation

estimating willingness to pay for improved water quality in the presence of item nonresponse bias this article deals with the problem of item nonresponse in contingent valuation surveys using a payment card method by applying a grouped data sample selection estimation technique that is capable of imputing the missing values conditional upon a respondent s decision to answer a willingness to pay question the advantage of the technique lies in its ability to utilize all of the information in the sample permitting a more efficient estimation in the presence of item nonresponse bias the major determinants of willingness to pay appear to be household income number of children education perception of existing water quality and identification with environmental issues copyright 2003 oxford university press

gendering the varieties of capitalism a study of occupational segregation by sex in advanced industrial societies this article explores the unintended gendered consequences of employment protection and vocational training systems it develops a micrologic of skill investment by workers and employers to identify the mechanism by which specific skills become disadvantageous for women the central claim of the article is that institutions that encourage male investment in specific skills exacerbate occupational sex segregation the article finds that coordinated market economies because of their robust institutional protection of male skill investments are generally more sex segregating than are liberal market economies the empirical section provides cross sectional analyses of advanced industrial countries

is there a glass ceiling over europe exploring the gender pay gap across the wages distribution using harmonised data from the european union household panel we analyse gender pay gaps by sector across the wages distribution for ten countries we find that the mean gender pay gap in the raw data typically hides large variations in the gap across the wages distribution we use quantile regression qr techniques to control for the effects of individual and job characteristics at different points of the distribution and calculate the part of the gap attributable to differing returns between men and women we find that first gender pay gaps are typically bigger at the top of the wage distribution a finding that is consistent with the existence of glass ceilings for some countries gender pay gaps are also bigger at the bottom of the wage distribution a finding that is consistent with sticky floors third the gender pay gap is typically higher at the top than the bottom end of the wage distribution suggesting that glass ceilings are more prevalent than sticky floors and that these prevail in the majority of our countries fourth the gender pay gap differs significantly across the public and the private sector wages distribution for each of our eu countries

a comparative analysis of the nativity wealth gap this paper investigates the source of the gap in the relative wealth posi tion of immigrant households residing in australia germany and the united states our results indicate that in germany and the united states wealth difierentials are largely the result of disparity in the educational attainment and demographic composition of the native and immigrant populations while income difierentials are relatively unimportant in understanding the nativity wealth gap in contrast the relatively small wealth gap between australian and foreign born households exists because immigrants to australia do not translate their relative educational and demographic advantage into a wealth advantage on balance our results point to substantial cross national disparity in the economic well being of immigrant and native families which is largely consistent with domestic labor markets and the selection policies used to shape the nature of the immigration ow

a meta analysis of the international gender wage gap abstract since the early 1970s a number of authors have calculated gender wage differentials between women and men of equal productivity this meta study provides a new quantitative review of this vast amount of empirical literature on gender wage differentials as it concerns not only differences in methodology data and time periods but also different countries we place particular emphasis on a proper consideration of the quality of the underlying study which is done by a weighting with quality indicators the results show that data restrictions i e the limitation of the analysis to new entrants never marrieds or one narrow occupation only have the biggest impact on the resulting gender wage gap moreover we are able to show what effect a misspecification of the underlying wage equation like the frequent use of potential experience has on the calculated gender wage gap over time raw wage differentials worldwide have fallen substantially however most of this decrease is due to better labor market endowments of females

gender role attitudes and the labour market outcomes of women across oecd countries this paper uses data from the world value surveys 1990 1995 1999 to investigate the impact of gender role attitudes and work values on women s labour market outcomes across 25 oecd countries anti egalitarian views are found to display the strongest negative association with female employment rates and the gender pay gap these views are however softening among recent cohorts on the other hand perceptions of women s role as homemakers which are likely formed in youth and linked to religious ideology are more persistent over time they could be implicated in the recent slowdown of the gender convergence in pay finally the unavoidable clash between family values and egalitarian views that takes the form of an inner conflict for many women the so called mother s guilt is another obstacle in the path towards greater gender equality in the labour market copyright 2005 oxford university press

unequal pay or unequal employment a cross country analysis of gender gaps we analyze gender wage gaps correcting for sample selection induced by nonemployment we recover wages for the nonemployed using alternative imputation techniques simply requiring assumptions on the position of imputed wages with respect to the median we obtain higher median wage gaps on imputed rather than actual wage distributions for several oecd countries however this difference is small in the united states the united kingdom and most central and northern eu countries and becomes sizable in southern eu countries where gender employment gaps are high selection correction explains nearly half of the observed negative correlation between wage and employment gaps

what do we really know about wages the importance of nonreporting and census imputation in the most frequently used microdata sets over a quarter of all respondents now refuse to answer some questions about their incomes the census bureau has dealt with this problem which has been increasing in severity over time by imputing incomes of non respondents their imputation procedure called the hot deck essentially matches nonrespondents with demographically similar donors in this paper we evaluate the census imputation methodology and raise some questions first the census procedure is tied to commonality of events in the population rather than the more appropriate informational content of regressors clearly the census procedure severely understates income in certain occupations because it is based on the apparently invalid assumption that income does not affect reporting propensities it most likely understates average incomes as well

income and the substitution pattern between domestic and international tourism demand this article analyses the role of income in the decision of participating in the tourism demand within 1 year the tourists who are participating can travel to domestic destinations only abroad destinations only or to both of them such a substitution pattern is modelled using a bivariate probit model the analysis is carried out to the regional level using a survey conducted in 15 european eu 15 countries in addition to the traditional socioeconomic variables the analysis adds new variables to the outbound tourism demand modelling such as the attributes of the place of residence the results show that tourism demand is income elastic however there are marked differences in the income elasticities of the probabilities of travelling domestically or abroad above certain income threshold the substitution pattern between destinations takes part the probability of travelling domestically only remains constant whereas the probability of travelling abroad keeps growing additionally the article prov

decomposing wage residuals unmeasured skill or statistical artifact the decomposition of wage residuals into standard deviation and percentile ranks can be misleading because the two measures are not necessarily independent with rising wage inequality the mean percentile rank of low wage groups will rise simply because more dispersed distributions have thicker tails this interpretation is consistent with the observed stability of gender and racial wage gaps in contrast the unmeasured skill interpretation of wage residuals would predict widening wage gaps in the face of rising wage inequality unless one posits an increase in the level of unobserved skill for women and blacks

new evidence on sex segregation and sex differences in wages from matched employee employer data we use new matched employer employee data to estimate the contributions of sex segregation and wage differences by sex within occupation industry establishment and occupation establishment cells to the overall sex gap in wages in contrast to earlier data used to study this question our data cover all industries and occupations across all regions of the united states we find that segregation of women into lower paying occupations industries establishments and occupations within establishments accounts for a sizable fraction of the sex gap in wages nonetheless approximately one half of the sex gap in wages remains attributable to the individual s sex

swimming with the tide solidary wage policy and the gender earnings gap this paper addresses the consequences of wage compression for the gender wage gap in sweden during the period 1968 1991 we find that the effects of changes in the wage structure on women s wages have varied over time and have been partly counteracting changes in industry wage differentials have systematically worked against women while changes in the returns to human capital and unobserved characteristics have contributed to reductions in the gender wage gap changes in the wage structure were particularly important between 1968 and 1974 when there was a dramatic reduction in overall wage inequality jel classification j16 j31 j51

wage structure and gender earnings differentials an international comparison using microdata to analyse the gender pay gap in ten industrialized nations we focus on the role of wage structure the prices of labour market skills in influencing the gender gap we find wage structure enormously important in explaining why the us gender gap is higher than that in most other countries we conclude that the us gap would be similar to that in sweden and australia the countries with the smallest gaps if the united states had their levels of wage inequality this finding reflects the larger penalty in the united states for those with low skill levels or employed in low wage sectors 650 o 75 the united states was amoung the countries with the largest differ entials oecd ilo usbls this paper uses microdata to analyse inter national differences in the gender pay gap among a sample of ten industrialized nations we focus particularly on explaining the surprisingly low ranking of the united states in comparison with other industrialized countries an advan tage of an international perspective is that countries vary considerably with respect to governmental policies women s relative labour market qualifications and wage setting institutions such variability allows one to infer reasons for differences in the pay gap and by implication the impact of alternative govern ment policies empirical research on gender pay gaps has traditionally focused on the role of gender differences in qualifications and on differences in the treatment of otherwise equally qualified male and female workers i e labour market dis crimination analyses of trends over time in the gender differential within countries as well as inter country comparisons of gender earnings ratios have tended to emphasize these types of gender specific factors an innovative feature of our study is to focus on the role of wage structure as an additional factor influencing the gender gap to analyse the impact of wage structure we adapt a framework developed by juhn et al 1991 to analyse trends over time in race differentials in the united states our findings suggest that labour market institutions that affect overall wage inequality have an extremely impor tant effect on the gender earnings gap wage structure describes the array of prices set for various labour market skills measured and unmeasured and rents received for employment in par

convergence in the gender wage gap in australia over the 1980s identifying the role of counteracting forces via the juhn murphy and pierce decomposition the paper utilises the juhn murphy and pierce 1991 decomposition to shed light on the pattern of slow male female wage convergance in australia over the 1980s the analysis allows one to distinguish between the role of wage structure and genderspecific effects the central question addressed is whether rising wage inequality counteracted the forces of increased female investment in labour market skills i e education and experience the conclusion is that in contrast to the us and the uk australian women do not appear to have been swimming against a tide of adverse wage structure changes

combining revealed and stated preference data to estimate the nonmarket value of ecological services an assessment of the state of the science this paper reviews the marketing transportation and environmental economics literature on the joint estimation of revealed preference rp and stated preference sp data the rp and sp approaches are first described with a focus on the strengths and weaknesses of each recognizing these strengths and weaknesses the potential gains from combining data are described a classification system for combined data that emphasizes the type of data combination and the econometric models used is proposed a methodological review of the literature is pursued based on this classification system examples from the environmental economics literature are highlighted a discussion of the advantages and disadvantages of each type of jointly estimated model is then presented suggestions for future research in particular opportunities for application of these models to environmental quality valuation are presented

growth versus security in dynamic investment analysis this paper concerns the problem of optimal dynamic choice in discrete time for an investor in each period the investor is faced with one or more risky investments the maximization of the expected

estimation of residential electricity demand function in seoul by correction for sample selection bias abstract this paper attempts to estimate the residential electricity demand function in seoul to this end we collected the data from a survey of households in seoul and employed the bivariate model to rectify the undesirable impacts of non response data the results show that the size of family the size of house dummy for having a plasma display panel television dummy for having an air conditioner and the household s income have positive relationships with the residential electricity demand on the other hand electricity price contributes negatively to the residential electricity demand in addition the price and income elasticities were estimated as 0 2463 and 0 0593 respectively implying that residential electricity demand in seoul is price and income inelastic such useful information is expected to help policy makers regulate the residential electricity supply and predict the effect of the price on the residential electricity demand in the future

imputing a continuous income variable from grouped and missing income observations abstract most cross sectional data sets collect income in a discrete number of categories that is in grouped form to simplify the respondent s task and to encourage a response in spite of such grouped data collection many respondents refuse to provide information on income this paper develops a method to impute a continuous and reliable value for income from grouped and missing income data

imputing a continuous income variable from a bracketed income variable with special attention to missing observations abstract this paper proposes a method based on polychotomous discrete choice methods to impute a continuous measure of income when only a bracketed measure of income is available and for only a subset of the obsevations the method is shown to perform well with cp5 data

gender roles and human capital inverstment the relationship between traditional attitudes and female labour market performance this paper investigates the relationship between the labour market behaviour of females and their attitudes towards traditional gender roles an attitudes index is constructed by employing individuals responses to statements related to the role of women and examined to determine whether it is correlated with individual characteristics the paper examines whether these attitudes influence human capital attainment and whether they are weakly exogenous to educational attainment it also focuses on the impact of these traditio nal attitudes upon labour supply and the return to education the results are dramatic it is found that females attitudes towards working women are developed in their youth and result in substantial reductions in their human capital investment labour supply and rates of return to education furthermore it is found that these attitudes are determined outside the educational process

the investment financing and control of the firm a long run survival view the present paper was motivated by a concern with the inadequacy of neoclassical theory in dealing with the investment and financing decisions of individuals and firms the theory is founded upon the classical world of certainty in which capital is held by indi viduals who maximise their wealth by undertaking the investment that equates the mar ginal rate of return on investment with the interest rate under these conditions say s law is true that is the supply of output creates its own demand and there can be no involuntary unemployment in his general theory keynes 1936 argued that with uncertainty and risk aversion the savings and investment decisions of individuals and firms could lead to depressed demand and unemployment this together with the great depression of the 1930s generated interest in a theory of investment and financing under uncertainty the search for such a theory was largely usurped by neoclassical economists who devoted their attention to establishing the conditions under which the properties of a perfectly competitive system under certainty also hold under uncertainty and risk aversion 1 unfortunately the dis covery of these conditions has not advanced our understanding of firm investment and financing behaviour on either a micro or macro level we are no better equipped to explain the behaviour of actual capitalist systems or the widespread unemployment in capitalist countries than we were before the advent of the theory the critical and patently false assumption of the neoclassical theory of capital under uncertainty is that the firm s objective is to maximise the current market value of its securities this objective may be appropriate from the standpoint of a firm s shareholders if they happen to be portfolio investors with relatively small stakes in the firm however it has not been shown that such policies serve the interests of those who control the firm three classes of firms may be distinguished on the basis of how they are controlled in one ownership and control are completely joined in a proprietorship in the second ownership and control are completely separated in a corporation whose control resides

gender segregation and earnings differences in the spanish labour market abstractthis 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 gender gap in earnings an international comparison with european matched employer employee data this article examines the origin of the cross country heterogeneity of the gender wage gap in nine european countries using a unique harmonized international matched employer employee dataset our novel findings suggest that cross country differences in the intensity of female segregation into low paying workplaces is a relevant source of international differences in the size of the gap and that international disparities in the characteristics of wage structures are not very influential on the other hand the evidence is not fully conclusive with respect to the influence on the variations of the gap of different macroeconomic social and institutional country specific features considered previously in the literature

the good the bad and the different can gender quotas raise the quality of politicians the debate over political gender quotas is unduly confined to a supposed trade off between diversity and competence we characterize the effects of a political gender quota in a citizen candidate model to find that quotas do increase the overall quality of those elected whenever the rewards from public office are high or the skill premium or political gender discrimination are sufficiently low in such cases high skill women candidates run for office in sufficiently high numbers driving off low skill male and female candidates our model compares quotas with other policies in terms of their impact on the number and quality of those elected

the payoff to work without pay volunteer work as an investment in human capital despite the widespread belief that volunteer work enhances an individual s employment prospects the hypothesis that volunteer work increases one s earnings has

swimming upstream trends in the gender wage differential in the 1980s using michigan panel study of income dynamics data for 1979 and 1988 we analyze how a falling gender wage gap occurred despite changes in wage structure unfavorable to low wage workers the decrease is traced to gender specific factors which more than counterbalanced changes in measured and unmeasured prices working against women supply shifts net of demand were unfavorable for women generally and hurt high skilled more than middle and low skilled women by analyzing wages we find support for the notion of a gender twist in supply and demand having its largest negative effect on high skilled women