gender occupational segregation and its impact on the gender wage differential among rural urban migrants a chinese case study since the late 1980s massive rural urban migration in china has attracted considerable attention from economists and policymakers both within and outside china one of the most striking features of rural urban migration is that job attainment among the migrants differs considerably between males and females it is of great interest to know the reasons for this difference and more importantly whether gender occupational segregation has a large impact on the gender wage differential among migrants this paper examines these issues using data on 1504 migrants collected in jinan city shandong province it is found that gender occupational segregation in this sector is mainly due to the unequal treatment of male and female attributes in occupational assignment and that this contributes very significantly to the gender wage differential among migrants a comparison with another study on china s rural industrial labour market is made which suggest that intra occupational gender wage discrimination is l

the crowding hypothesis and comparable worth although women s pay and occupational distribution have improved during the past few years it is still true that women earn considerably less than men and that their occupational distribution is substantially different because progress has been slow toward equality in the labor market some have called for a comparable worth policy proponents of this approach argue that occupational segregation contributes to the earnings disparity between women and men one theoretical justification for this position is the crowding hypothesis this paper first explains this theory and presents a method used to test its principal hypothesis it then describes an extension of this design for estimating the phenomenon that comparable worth policies address empirical studies conducted in this area are viewed and new findings are presented finally limitations of this analysis are discussed i introduction

the gender earnings differential in the russian transition economy using data from the russia longitudinal monitoring survey rlms the first nationally representative household survey in the russian federation the author examines the gender earnings differentia

wage structure and gender earnings differentials in china and india summary this study analyzes how changes in overall wage inequality and gender specific factors affected the gender wage gap in chinese and indian urban labor markets in the 1990s and 2000s we observe the significant expansion of skilled workers and the increase in overall wage inequality in both countries over the period analyses of micro data present that contrasting evolutionary patterns in gender wage gap emerged over the period showing a widened wage gap in china but a dramatically reduced gap in india in both countries female workers increased skill levels contributed to reducing the gender wage gap however increases in observed prices of education and experience worked unfavorably for high skilled women counterbalancing their improvement in labor market qualifications decomposition of changes in the gender wage gap shows that china s widened gap was attributable to gender specific factors such as deteriorated observable and unobservable labor market qualifications and increased discrimination especially against low and middle skilled female workers for india gender specific factors and relatively high wage gains of low and middle skilled workers reduced the male female wage gap our study suggests that consideration of overall wage structure unobserved skills and gender specific factors such as unobserved labor market qualification and discrimination against women should be included in designing policies to promote gender equity and inclusiveness in labor markets

corporate finance in developing countries new evidence for india abstract recent work by singh and hamid 1992 corporate financial structures in developing countries and singh 1995 corporate financial patterns in industrializing economies a comparative international study has suggested that large firms in a number of developing countries including india use much more external finance in general and equity finance in particular than those in developed countries however the contrast is in part a product of methodological differences and india is much less different from countries such as france and italy the singh results are not due merely to bias arising from the focus on the largest companies since the rest of the indian corporate sector also issues large amounts of equity via informal networks rather than organized stock exchanges the importance of such issues suggests the need for further research before policy conclusions can be drawn

new evidence on public sector wage differentials this paper examines the nature of wage differentials for men and women in the public sector using a sample selection approach this includes the self selection that occurs in the sectoral choice process as well as the selection that arises in context of the labour force participation decision of men and women using 1991 current population survey data it is found that male workers in the public sector on an average earn higher wages than male private sector workers whereas the wage premium earned by women is undermined by a slightly greater degree of discrimination in the public sector

rates of time preference and valuations of the duration of life abstract this paper develops a multi period markov model of the lifetime choice of occupational fatality risks the empirical model analyzes the wage effects of job risks using the 1982 university of michigan panel study of income dynamics in conjunction with death statistics from the u s national traumatic occupational fatality survey evidence regarding workers intertemporal choices with respect to risks with long term implications is broadly consistent with rational behavior workers implicit real rate of time preference with respect to future life years equals approximately 11 percent this rate of time preference decreases with education

the evolution of the racial wage hierarchy in post apartheid south africa this article develops a multilateral decomposition procedure for the analysis of wage differentials and applies this to the evolution of the racial wage hierarchy in south africa over the period 1993 2001 we find evidence that the wage position of the majority african workforce improved relative to all other racial groups immediately following the transition to democratic rule in 1994 but that these gains have been largely eroded in the ensuing years of the post apartheid era we review the range of policy initiatives that have been taken by the government since 1994 in the light of our empirical findings

the effects of comparable worth in the public sector on public private occupational relative wages if as appears likely comparable worth programs are confined to the public sector the level of publiclprivate relative pay may change and the structure of publiclprivate relative wages within occupations will almost certainly change the nature of these changes will determine the degree to which public wages conform more or less closely to the prevailing wage standard which requires that wages for public jobs be equivalent to wages for similar private sector jobs thus there will be implications for economic efficiency this study analyzes alternative scenarios involving comparable worth in the state and local government slg sector the results suggest that when comparable worth is implemented through special wage increases public sector wages are moved further from compliance with the prevailing wage standard this is because public wages are on average already on a par with privatesector wages however comparable worth tends to provide larger wage increases to those occupations where publiclprivate wages are relatively low and when the payroll budget under comparable worth is fixed at the same size as the payroll budget before comparable worth public wages could be moved closer to compliance with the prevailing wage norm

the impact of equal opportunity policy on sex differentials in earnings and occupations women began to enter nontraditional occupations at an increasing rate at the same time federal equal opportunity policy was strengthened in 1972 equal employment opportunity eeo policy was strengthened and expanded and equal opportunity in education became federal policy for the first time these policies constitute a two pronged attack on sex discrimination because they address impediments to mobility on both the demand and supply sides of the labor market together they should increase women s access to nontraditional jobs and to the skills necessary to perform them during the 1970 s women made occupational gains that are concentrated disproportionately in the white collar occupations one explanation for this is that the impact of federal equal opportunity policy differs across schooling levels in section i i discuss federal equal opportunity policy section ii contains empirical evidence on the direct effects of eeo policy on sex differentials in earnings and occupational segregation by sex section iii presents estimates of changes in the effect of schooling on women s entry into nontraditional occupations during the 1970 s and attempts to determine what portion may be due to equal educational opportunity policy and to indirect effects of eeo policy

intertemporal market effect on gender earnings differentials lawyers in canada 1970 80 the conventional methodology for decomposition of cross sectional earnings differentials is extended to include a market effect on intertemporal changes in earnings and to analyse the changes in gender differentials over time the integrated cross sectional and intertemporal methodology is illustrated by a decomposition of the change in the earnings differential that occurred during the 1970s between male and female lawyers in canada an unprecedented rate of growth in the supply of lawyers during the 1970s in canada was associated with changes in the gender earnings differential in the legal profession this rapid supply growth had an almost negligible net impact on female earnings but a negative impact of 15 on the male earnings this explains the narrowing of the earnings differential by almost 30 over the decade although three fifths of the gender differential in 1970 and half of the differential in 1980 were attributable to the differences in the characteristics of the two groups these chang

the decline of sex segregation and the wage gap 1970 80 this study makes use of 1970 and 1980 census of population employment and earnings data at the detailed occupation and industry level to examine changes in the distribution of the u s work force by sex and to assess their impact on relative female earnings first we find clear evidence that both occupational segregation and industrial segregation declined during these years second high employment growth within an occupation is associated with declines in segregation third declines in industry segregation within occupation are associated with improvements in relative female earnings independently of other factors which affect relative pay fourth high employment growth is associated with improvements in relative female earnings independently of its effect on occupational segregation as a result employment growth acts to reduce the wage gap directly possibly by lowering barriers to women finding jobs at high wage firms and also indirectly by lowering the degree of industrial segregation these results thus suggest that barriers or discrimination against women tend to be lower in sectors where demand is strong

marginal q revisited two measures of firm investment behaviour used in the empirical research are tobin s q average q and marginal q the marginal q is a more recently introduced measure than tobin s q and is not as well known this article aims to demonstrate the advantages of using marginal q as a performance measure and is a response to an earlier critical article berglund 2011 claiming an elusiveness bias the pro arguments made in response are that the claimed elusiveness is not a problem furthermore many of the evaluation problems inherent in the empirical use of tobin s q like estimation of replacement cost of assets can be avoided from a pure theoretical standpoint it has long been recognized that marginal q is superior to an average measure of investment behaviour such as tobin s q

early career work experience and gender wage differentials we estimate a wage model that includes an array of variables measuring the fraction of time worked during each year of the career this array fully characterizes past employment experience regardless of how sporadic it has been our model yields substantially higher estimated returns to experience and lower returns to tenure than do models that measure experience cumulatively and use the standard quadratic functional form we find that the data reject the standard model but fail to reject our model furthermore we find that 12 of the male female wage gap is due to differences in the timing of work experience

discrimination empirical evidence from the united states the study of discrimination received a major impetus in the 1960 s when increasing social attention focused upon race and gender differentials in market outcomes gary becker s the economics of discrimination 1957 strongly influenced empirical research by providing a definition of wage discrimination and suggesting a specific way in which it might operate during the following years new theories were developed and refined in an attempt to explain why there appears to be continued discrimination in spite of market forces presumably operating against it similarly a large amount of empirical work has been done to determine whether and how much discrimination actually exists and to a lesser extent to test the implications of the various theories even so the hope expressed by becker in the preface of the second edition 1971 that our understanding of discrimination would increase so rapidly that the materials in his book would become obsolete before another decade began has clearly not been fulfilled here we review what has been learned in the intervening years and suggest some fruitful directions for future research 1 the focus of this paper like that of most of the empirical research in this area is on determining the extent of discrimination rather than on testing alternative models of discrimination

the trend in the male female wage gap in the united states despite the rise in the feminist movement the enactment of equal opportunity legislation and the rapid increase in women s labor force participation a substantial sex differential in wages has persisted in the united states for at least 4 decades measured by hourly earnings of year round workers this wage gap was 31 in 1955 widened to a 35 37 range by the 1960s and early 1970s and then narrowed to 33 by 1982 this paper examines the extent to which changes in the characteristics of men and women in the labor force and other factors can account for the observed pattern the main finding is that increases in women s labor force participation were initially associated with a declining skill level of employed women relative to employed men where skill is measured by years of schooling and job tenure more recently the work experience of employed women has been increasing which helps account for the recent narrowing trend in the wage gap during the 1970s the wage gap probably woul have narrowed m

native immigrant wage differentials and occupational segregation in the greek labour market this article explores native immigrant wage differentials in the greek labour market data from the most recent greek household budget survey 2004 05 were employed four alternative occupational categories were considered and occupational choice was explicitly modelled controlling for occupational selectivity occupation specific wage regressions for representative samples of employed native and immigrant workers were estimated and an augmented decomposition technique was utilized to analyse inter and intra occupation wage differentials the obtained results demonstrate that roughly 48 of the average wage differential cannot be explained by differences in observed characteristics and that the larger component of this unexplained part is due to asymmetrical occupational access by native and immigrant workers

the distribution of the male female earnings differential 1970 1990 the authors examine the male female earnings differential between 1970 and 1990 their objective is to provide consistent estimates that can be compared and interpreted over time and to assess the sensitivity of their results to alternative specifications the authors find that women made modest gains over the period standard decomposition techniques reveal that gender differences in observable characteristics do not explain much of the earnings differential most of the improvement in women s relative earnings has come by a decline in the unexplained component the authors also find that the differential varies systematically across age and education groups and across high and low income women coauthors are dwayne benjamin andree desaulniers and mary grant

changes in the male female wage gap 1976 85 this study uses detailed information on work experience tenure and on the job training collected in the 1976 and 1985 questionnaires of the panel study of income dynamics to account for changes in wage differentials between white men and white women over these nine years decompositions of changes in the wage gap are used to illustrate the contribution of individual factors between 1976 and 1985 the wage gap between white men and women narrowed by approximately 4 percent this study finds that nearly 50 percent of this reduction was due to average changes in job tenure and other work history variables over this period

worker effort decisions and efficient gender specific wage tenure profiles i introduction during the past thirty years women have increased their labor force participation female labor market intermittency has decreased and women s total labor market experience and years of tenure with the current employer have increased what these trends imply about the evolution of the gender gap in wages depends in part on gender differences in returns to tenure it is therefore surprising that economists have all but ignored the empirical finding that women have higher returns to tenure than do men over a significant portion of their working lives one reason why this finding has been ignored or treated as an anomaly may be the lack of theoretical constructs which predict an inverse gender gap in returns to tenure several labor market models predict that women should have lower returns to tenure than men human capital theory offers the most frequently cited explanation of flatter earnings profiles for female workers according to human capital theory gains from specialization and exchange lead to one household member specializing in home production and the other in market work since only women bear children historically the outcome of the exchange has been that women have specialized in home production indeed all surveys of time use indicate that women spend on average two to three times as long on housework as men as a consequence of this allocation women anticipate intermittent labor force participation and fewer years overall in the labor force than men this pattern too is borne out in national surveys which invariably find shorter average tenure and fewer total years of labor market experience for women than for men women typically have shorter completed job spells as well hall 1982 table 5 presents evidence that the gender gap in completed job duration is quite large he estimates that 63 8 percent of men but only 49 6 percent of women hold jobs with eventual tenure of at least five years with 37 3 and 15 1 percent of men and women respectively holding jobs with eventual tenure of at least twenty years because of the greater intermittency and shorter anticipated work history for women than men women will find it optimal to acquire less human capital than men 1 lesser quantities of general human capital tends to flatten both the observed earnings experience profile and the observed earnings tenure profile two factors contribute to this pattern first skills deteriorate during periods out of the labor market as in mincer and polachek 1974 which flattens the earnings experience profile for women relative to men second women anticipating discontinuous work histories select into occupations with flatter earnings profiles to minimize the penalty to labor force withdrawals as in polachek 1981 the effects of firm specific human capital on gender differences in wage tenure profiles vary across models for example kuhn 1993 constructs an elegant game theoretic model of gender differences in training and wages if women have a higher exogenous exit rate than men in equilibrium they will be placed in jobs with lower levels of firm specific training with a positive relation between training and productivity and a common share rate of the costs and benefits of specific training for men and women the wage tenure profiles of men will be steeper than those for women in contrast becker and lindsay 1994 argue that firm specific human capital leads to higher returns to tenure for women than men becker and lindsay assume that men and women have the same level of firm specific training however women have greater variance in their opportunity cost of remaining with a firm and so are more likely than men to separate inefficiently by giving women a greater share of both the costs and benefits of firm specific human capital through a steeper wage tenure profile firms reduce undesirable turnover although human capital arguments dominate the literature on gender differences in the labor market other models of wage growth predict flatter wage tenure profiles for women

trends in earnings differentials by gender 1971 1981 this paper clarifies trends in relative earnings by sex over the decade 1971 1981 and decomposes these trends to determine which factors contributed to a decline and which to an increase our analyses are based upon data from the annual demographic files of the current population survey for 1972 and 1982 this study is unique in that it estimates earnings functions in each year which are corrected for selectivity bias it is found that such a correction markedly raises the progress of white women relative to men among blacks the impact of the selectivity bias correction was to substantially lower the relative earnings increase of women however the coefficients on the selectivity variable were not significant the findings suggest declining sex role specialization and discrimination as conventionally measured over the decade on the other hand contrary to expectations the total effect of variables reflecting the sex composition of the individuals occupation worked to widen the sex differential over the period the sex differential was also adversely affected by a decline in the relative return to education especially for whites authors modified

human capital discrimination and the gender wage gap in bangladesh summary this paper investigates changes in the gender wage gap in bangladesh over the period 1999 2009 the gap in average wages between men and women decreased by 31 over this period this paper shows that a key driver of this change was an improvement in female educational qualifications it also demonstrates that the gender wage gap across the wage distribution narrowed much more at the lower end of the wage distribution than at the upper end it attributes this mainly to a decline in discrimination against women implications for policies aimed at more equal access to education and enforcement of equal pay legislation in bangladesh are also identified

is gender pay discrimination on the wane evidence from panel data 1968 1989 previous studies of the gender pay gap in the united states have found a narrowing of that gap in the past two decades but have differed substantially in the reported magnitude of that change this study calculates gender earnings differences using panel study of income dynamics data for 1968 89 a longer time series than has been examined by any similar study it also employs improved statistical techniques notably an adjustment for selection bias and a recently recommended modification of the most commonly used decomposition technique the author finds a significant decline both in the portion of the differential due to observed differences between men s and women s characteristics and in the unexplained component which is often attributed to discrimination the results of one analysis show that over the 1968 89 period the gender pay gap narrowed to as little as 47

industrial restructuring and regional household income growth negrey c zickel m b and fenn j m 1998 industrial restructuring and regional household income growth reg studies 32 103 111 in this study industry and place intersect in a systematic examination of the effects of industrial restructuring on men s and women s personal income and married couple and female headed household income we analyse income trends from 1969 89 in relationship to shifts in employment in manufacturing finance insurance and real estate wholesale and retail trade and services in 140 us metropolitan areas grouped into six types improvements in women s income appear to have offset men s losses in all six area types given increases in average median married couple household income in each area type during the 20 year period our most provocative finding is the average decrease in median female headed household income in the 19 classic deindustrializing centres while female headed household income actually increased on average in the five other area types this finding ha

declining bias and gender wage discrimination a meta regression analysis this paper extends tests and revises a previous meta regression analysis of the gender wage gap stanley and jarrell 1998 we find that there remains a strong though dampened tendency for discrimination estimates to fall and male researchers still report significantly larger amounts of wage discrimination against women this extensive research base containing 104 estimates suggests that there is less need to correct for selection bias an indirect sign of lessened discrimination there is evidence that gender research is changing and improving although gender wage discrimination has lessened the research base still finds a significant gender wage inequality

trends in the male female wage gap the 1980s compared with the 1970s 1 introduction an interesting pattern emerges when contrasting men s and women s wage growth in the 1970s and 1980s from 1979 to 1989 female wages grew 1 7 per annum faster than male wages this wage growth in the 1980s resulted in a 17 narrowing of the gender wage gap on the other hand from 1969 to 1979 female wages grew at a rate only 0 39 per year faster than male wages resulting in very little narrowing of the gender wage gap blau 1998 as noted by smith and ward 1989 these contrasting trends puzzled many because it is well known that female work behavior shot up more dramatically in the 1970s than in the 1980s if female wage growth is related to increasing labor force activity one would have expected the male female wage gap to narrow more in the 1970s than in the 1980s the purpose of this paper is to identify some of the reasons why the male female wage gap narrowed more quickly in the 1980s than in the 1970s despite a deceleration of the growth in female labor force activity in the 1980s what appears to be the case is that predominantly younger and less experienced females entered the labor force in the 1970s the entry of women with relatively little human capital brought down the growth in women s average human capital o neill 1985 so that despite the upsurge of women s labor force participation in the 1970s women s average human capital relative to men s increased more slowly in the 1970s than in the 1980s this relatively slower growth in women s human capital appears to have played itself out in the 1980s both because the number of women joining the labor force slowed and because women s labor force attachment as measured by the proportion of potential work years actually worked increased blau 1998 with these trends average female human capital increased in the 1980s resulting in greater overall wage gains because of the stark differences between the 1970s and 1980s this paper concentrates on distinguishing the factors that contribute to men s and women s wage growth in the two decades despite the substantial literature on the male female wage gap the interdecade difference in the trend has not been adequately examined in what follows this paper uses the panel study of income dynamics psid to illustrate the effects of the demographic changes alluded to above 1 first it presents wage trends for the 1970s and 1980s second it provides direct measures of changes in human capital growth within each decade third to illustrate the importance of these demographic trends especially how new young labor market entrants bring down wages it shows that the higher relative female wage growth in the 1980s is reduced and the relatively slower female wage growth in the 1970s is enhanced when one controls for individual human capital characteristics these effects are illustrated first by including actual experience type variables in a regression whose coefficients measure wage growth and second by eliminating new entrants from 1970s and 1980s regression analysis the paper shows that with these controls increases in female average growth in both the 1970s and 1980s were more comparable than previously thought 2 recent literature on trends in the male female wage gap this is not the first paper to recognize the trend in male female wage convergence o neill 1985 blau and beller 1988 smith and ward 1989 goldin 1990 katz and murphy 1992 wellington 1993 o neill and polachek 1993 blau and kahn 1997 and blau 1998 all note that women s wages have risen relative to men smith and ward 1989 find that female relative wages rose between 1920 and 1980 when adjusting for worker skills goldin 1990 piecing together various data sources finds a similar long term narrowing according to her the ratio of female to male earnings in the economy as a whole rose from 0 46 to 0 56 during the period 1890 to 1930 but was virtually stable from 1950 to around 1980 p

difference in earnings structures across local labor markets abstract this paper investigates whether workers encountered different earnings structures across local labor markets in the united states our analysis of human capital earnings models suggests that the u s is comprised of numerous distinct local labor markets as defined by a standard metropolitan statistical area

law finance and firm growth we investigate how differences in legal and financial systems affect firms use of external financing to fund growth we show that in countries whose legal systems score high on an efficiency index a greater proportion of firms use long term external financing an active though not necessarily large stock market and a large banking sector are also associated with externally financed firm growth the increased reliance on external financing occurs in part because established firms in countries with well functioning institutions have lower profit rates government subsidies to industry do not increase the proportion of firms relying on external financing the corporate finance literature suggests that market imperfections caused by conflicts of interest and informational asymmetries between corporate insiders and investors constrain firms in their ability to fund investment projects the magnitude of these imperfections depends in part on the effectiveness of the legal and financial systems because these systems differ across countries the literature implies that there should exist systematic cross country differences in firms ability to obtain external capital to finance investment in this paper we examine whether the underdevelopment of legal and financial systems does prevent firms in some countries from investing in potentially profitable growth opportunities in particular we focus on the use of long term debt or external equity to fund growth see our earlier work demirgut kunt and maksimovic 1996a which compares firms financial structures in developed and developing countries and finds the greatest difference to be in the provision of long term credit we estimate a financial planning model to obtain the maximum growth rate that each firm in our thirty country sample could attain without access to long term financing we then compare these predicted growth rates to growth rates realized by firms in countries with differing degrees of development in their legal and financial systems our approach enables us to identify specific characteristics of the legal and financial systems that are associated with long term financing of firm growth thus we provide a micro level test of the hypoth

occupational segregation and wages in australia abstract the australian labour market is characterised by a gender wage differential of about 13 this paper investigates the claim that this is associated with the absence of appropriate evaluation ofthe work performed in female occupations about 40 of the differential might be removed by the implementation of true comparable worth a figure at the upper end of the range reported for the us labour market

community college enrollment college major and the gender wage gap the literature on the narrowing of the gender wage gap during the 1980s considers among other factors the closing of the male female differential in post secondary education this paper looks specifically at the role played by the dramatic relative increase in women s enrollment in two year colleges with independent cross sections developed using nlsy data the authors find that the gender wage gap narrowed by 0 0469 log points between 1985 and 1990 and by 0 0932 log points between 1989 and 1994 the more pronounced decrease observed for 1989 94 is largely explained by erosion of male female differences in weeks worked job tenure and full time employment a more novel finding is evidence that while change in the quantity of education provides essentially no explanatory power disaggregating education by two year and four year providers and by major field of study accounts for 8 5 11 of the closing of the wage gap over the 1989 94 period

constitutional political economy in the european union this article surveys recent research in constitutional political economy in europe although not all of theworks discussed necessarily focus only on european constitutional issues or are written by europeans european constitutional issues figure importantly in each area surveyed the article examines the literatures linking constitutional institutions to economic growth government size government deficits and corruption bicameralism direct democracy and federalism three exclusively european topics also are covered constitutional issues in the transition countries the structure of the european union and the draft constitution for the european union

the impact of unionization on male female earnings differences in canada the impact of unionization on male female earnings differences in canada is analyzed using data spanning 1981 to 1988 a period in which the male female unionization gap narrowed considerably gender differences in union density union wages and nonunion wages are decomposed into characteristics related and discriminatory components we find that the drop in the gender unionization gap prevented an increase of 7 percent in the overall wage differential between men and women also male female earnings differences in the nonunion sector make a substantially larger contribution to the gender earnings gap than do those in the union sector

compensating wage differentials and the value of life abstract this paper examines the relationship between willingness to pay and compensating wage differential measures of the value of a statistical life it resolves some recently noted discrepancies between such measures

male female disparity in starting pay empirical studies of the earnings of male and female workers persistently reveal a gap that is unexplained by the economic variables in these models this gap has been given two interpretations in the literature one holds that the gap reflects non market forces which distort the equilibrium relation among the wages of competing workers discrimination according to this view prevents female workers from being offered jobs commensurate with their qualifications and crowds them into low productivity occupations 2 the alternative interpretation holds that some substantial portion of the gap is an artifact the result of missing variables biased parameters or measurement error these researchers view the labor market as highly competitive and were it possible to correct for all these statistical problems the measured wage gap would largely vanish 3 this research belongs to the latter category we argue that a portion of the measured gap at least that observed between the earnings of young men and women during their first few years with their employers reflects sex related differences in the shares of investment in firm specific human capital borne by workers of each group moreover these variations in investment levels are freely chosen by women and in no way imply long run deficits in their earning power on the contrary the model predicts steeper earnings profiles of women who undertake this firm specific investment thus women s earnings are predicted eventually to overtake and surpass those of equally qualified men this theory was developed in earlier research by becker and lindsay 2 based on a model of hashimoto 11 12 and extensions by parsons 21 we argued that young women for nondiscriminatory reasons elect to shoulder a larger share of this investment than young men the explanation for this is developed in two stages the first derives the terms under which both male and female workers share the investment with their employers the second argues that female workers will be led by these considerations to bear a larger share workers of both sexes agree to enter into inflexible wage contracts with employers specifying a share of the investment i e a wage deduction from current mvp and a post investment wage the advantage to such contracts lies in the solution to an assymetric information problem the

segmented labor markets new evidence from a study of four race gender groups using data from a supplement to the 1983 current population survey the author tests hypotheses of segmented labor market theory two labor market sectors a primary sector and secondary sector are identified on the basis of occupational segmentation as inferred from workers answers to the question of whether specific skills or prior training were conditions for their employment the results show significant unexplained earnings differentials across sectors for each of four groups black men black women white men and white women other segmented labor market hypotheses are also generally supported by the results but distinct variations are found across the four groups

income inequality among female heads of households racial inequality reconsidered this paper investigates the factors that might have influenced earnings inequality among female heads of households over an extended period the study used the generalized entropy measures of inequality in short run as well as long run income for the period 1978 86 the results suggest that short run inequality has generally increased these fluctuations are due partially to the existence of transitory components which distort our view the measured long run inequality shows a decline in the early years because of the smoothing of the transitory components race in conjunction with age education and marital status is used to investigate their effects race and education are shown to be the most influential factors the mobility profiles show the existence of permanent inequality among female heads of households

post school investment and wage differentials some further evidence the topic of wage differentials between demographic groups has received a great deal of attention in the literature among the most researched areas are wage differentials based on race and gender studies have consistently found that men earn more than women and whites earn more than blacks many attempts have been undertaken to explain these wage differentials with two main explanations evolving over time the first claims one group is paid less than another due to discrimination thus the fact that white males earn more than black males may be due to employers and employees distaste for hiring and working with minorities the second main explanation claims different groups have different levels of human capital thus black males earn less not because of discrimination but because they have fewer acquired skills than white males wage differentials are obviously important for public policy if workers are paid differing amounts simply because of their race or gender then society is not fully utilizing its resources this would indicate a need for stronger government intervention to remove discriminatory practices by businesses for example this intervention may take the form of affirmative action programs or mandating comparable worth however if the gap in wages is due to choices made by individuals which lead to differences in human capital then the wage differentials may be justified as a result government intervention is not only unnecessary but may be an example of inefficient regulation since no easy way exists to measure the extent of discrimination the standard method has been to decompose the residual of a wage equation into explained and unexplained portions the idea being that some of the wage gap can be explained by differences in attributes between groups of individuals goldin and polachek 5 point out that attributes may also be due to discrimination if for example blacks are the first to be laid off this may result in lower levels of experience this is not by choice and may indicate discrimination also there is a question of which is the appropriate base group for example the researcher has two alternatives when examining the wage gap between black and white males he or she can take the predicted black wage given white characteristics as a percentage of white wages or take the actual black wage as a percentage of predicted white wages given black characteristics in many cases the choice is not really clear and as a result often an average of these two is taken by employing a dummy variable for either

gender wage gap and the role of skills and tasks evidence from the austrian piaac data set we analyze the gender differences in skills tasks and skill matching of workers and the impact of these factors on the gender wage gap using the survey of adult skills a product of the oecd pro

labor market discrimination against hispanic and black men h ispanic american men have lower average wage rates than white non hispanics in 1975 the average white non hispanic male wage earner in the united states earned 5 97 an hour mexican men earned 4 31 72 as much as white non hispanics puerto rican men earned 4 52 76 as much and cuban men earned 5 33 89 as much as white non hispanics by way of comparison black men s average wages in 1975 were 4 65 78 of the white male wage several possible reasons for the hispanics lower wages come to mind among them are age and education geographic location immigration language difficulties and discrimination for example as shown in table 1 mexicans and puerto ricans are younger on average than the white non hispanic population and earnings tend to rise with age hispanics have lower average levels of education than white non hispanics and wages are positively associated with education many mexican americans live in the southwest where prices are relatively low moreover hispanics are more likely to be recent immigrants and to lack fluency in english than white non hispanics and so to be at a disadvantage in the labor market in addition there is a widespread belief that hispanics suffer from employment discrimination and cannot obtain the wages that their human capital would command if they were non hispanic whites how much of the wage differentials described above are due to each of these factors and to other inter group differences in wage related characteristics in particular how much impact does labor market discrimination have on the average hispanic man s wage and how does this compare with discrimination against blacks this paper provides answers to these questions a few other efforts have been made to analyze the relative earnings of hispanic and white nonhispanic men using 1960 and 1970 census data fogel 1966 poston and alvirez 1973 poston alvirez and tienda 1976 long 1977 and gwartney and long 1978 we use more recent data from the 1976 survey of income and education this data set enables us to measure wage rates more accurately and to specify the wage function more completely than does the census unlike previous analysts in estimating the wage function we take account of possible selectivity bias due to the distinction between average wage offers and average observed wages thus we hope to obtain a more accurate and up to date measure of labor market discrimination against hispanic men section ii explains the method used to separate the minority white non hispanic wage differential into the portions due to differences in average characteristics and the portion due to differences in unobserved factors and discrimination taking into account the possibility of selectivity bias in the observed wage sample section iii describes the data used in the study and the specification of the wage equation the breakdown of the observed wage differentials into components due to differences in participation in the wage and salary sector local price levels average characteristics and discrimination are presented in section iv section v summarizes our findings and discusses their implications for efforts to improve the economic situation of hispanics in the united states

male female differences in hourly wages the role of human capital working conditions and housework this study uses a new data set from a 1986 survey of workers to examine simultaneously the wage effects of human capital household responsibilities working conditions and on the job training the analysis suggests that household responsibilities had a negative effect on women s earnings but the unexplained difference between the earnings of men and women is not greatly reduced by inclusion in the explanatory model of information on either housework or working conditions the presence of children appears to have had a positive effect on the wages of both men and women t wenty years of research on gender differences in earnings have failed to explain the entire wage gap as a consequence of measured differences between male and female workers some researchers view the unexplained residual as evidence of discrimination against female workers others take the position that the entire wage gap is potentially explicable by differences in labor supply according to the latter view an unexplained wage gap remains because the data sets in use do not contain adequate information on all productivity related characteristics this view implies that the unexplained wage gap will be reduced by more comprehensive infor

reassessing the male female wage differential a fixed effects approach the vast literature on the subject of the male female wage differential has shown that despite dramatic structural and behavioral changes in the labor supply of women a sizeable wage differential exists 19 2 9 6 4 o neill 16 s92 finds that a sex differential of about 40 as measured by full time annual earnings has persisted in the u s for the last four decades but while few doubt the existence of the wage gap there is considerable controversy regarding the role of the factors explaining the gap the conventional approach of economists has been to estimate earnings as a function of various socio economic characteristics the observed wage gap is decomposed into a part explained by productivity related factors and an unexplained residual traditionally labelled as discrimination while it is possible that the unexplained variation in earnings is the result of discrimination it is also possibly the result of model misspecification 2 in this present paper we address the misspecification that could possibly arise from omitted variables endogeneity and sample selection while these issues have been considered in the context of women s labor supply functions they have largely been ignored in studies on the wage differential 12 13 we approach the problem of omitted variables by formulating a fixed effects model in this way productivity related factors that are difficult to measure or have unsuitable proxies are netted out from the earnings equation furthermore some of the variables that are used to explain wages are themselves the outcome of discrimination in particular the labor market experience of a woman is dependent on her wages earned here we address the endogeneity that such a cause and effect relationship may bring about a third difficulty arises because a typical sample of working women is a non random selection of the female labor force giving rise to the problem of sample selection bias heckman s 12 213 17 procedure is used to formulate a sample selection model of earnings the organization of this paper proceeds as follows section ii begins with the traditional model of earnings and then develops an extended model which consolidates the issues of omitted variables endogeneity and sample selection section iii contains the empirical results of the

male female wage differentials and policy responses without implicating them for any of the contents of the paper i am grateful to the following for helpful discussions or comments andrea beller university of illinois david bloom harvard and columnbia glen cain university of wisconsin ron ehrenberg cornell victor fuchs stanford bob gregory australian national university jonathan leonard university of california berkeley roberta robb brock university and paul weiler harvard financial support of the humanities and social sciences committee of the research board of the universitu of toronto is eratefullu acknowlede ed

heteroskedastic sample selection and developing country wage equations many researchers have dealt with potential selectivity bias in developing country wage equations by employing heckman s 1979 two step method or related techniques despite the potential for such methods to produce misleading results if the assumptions on which they are based are incorrect this paper argues that the results produced even by parametric easy to implement selectivity bias correction methods can inspire more confidence than the typical applications to date when model selection testing is used to select from a specified diverse set assumptions for which there is support in the data and when sensitivity analysis is used to identify parameters whose estimates are robust across a wide range of assumptions in particular it highlights the importance of allowing for the nonlinearities implied by selection rule heteroskedasticity there is economic reason to suspect heteroskedasticity and econometric reason to believe that the nonlinearities it introduces into the first stage will improve

survival versus consumption we develop an indirect method to estimate utility and willingness to pay wtp for reductions in the risk of death at various ages using a life cycle model of consumption we assume that an individual sets his consumption level each year so as to maximize his expected lifetime utility alternative assumptions about opportunities for borrowing and annuities characterize two polar types of societies in our robinson crusoe case an individual must be entirely self sufficient and annuities are not available in our perfect markets case an individual can borrow against future earnings and purchase actuarially fair annuities we show that under these assumptions wtp is the sum of livelihood discounted expected future earnings and consumer surplus to illustrate our methods we derive wtp for an average financially independent american man under plausible assumptions the model is calibrated to 1978 earnings e g 18 000 per year for men aged 45 54 with at least some income in the robinson crusoe case wtp increases from 500 000 at age 20 to a peak of 1 250 000 at age 40 and declines to 630 000 at age 60 in the perfect markets case age variations are less pronounced wtp is 1 050 000 at age 20 peaks at 1 070 000 at age 25 and declines to 600 000 at age 60 these results suggest that individuals value risks to their lives at several times the pro rata share of their future earnings

generating conditional expectations from models with selectivity bias comment abstract plugging identical values of the mills ratio into estimates of selectivity adjusted wage regressions for men and women generates wage predictions that pertain to men and women with identical unobserved characteristics only under highly restrictive conditions this calls into question the suggestion of vella 1988 and the details of several gender gap decomposition studies

on the decomposition of wage differentials the often used method for decomposing wage differentials into human capital and discrimination components is reformulated so that both t he disadvantage or cost discrimination it imposes on a black or minority wage earner and the advantage or benefit it bestows on a white or majority wage earner can be estimated copyright 1988 by mit press

trends in the well being of american women 1970 1995 this paper examines the trends in the well being of american women over the last 25 years a time of significant changes in the relative economic status of women and in the labor market as a whole a broad range of indicators are considered to capture changes in women s well being in the family as well as in the labor market for virtually all age and education groups substantial evidence is obtained of rising gender equality in labor market outcomes notably labor force participation wages and occupational distributions broad evidence is also found of greater gender parity within married couple families as the housework time of husbands increased relative to wives and the relative wages of wives rose compared to their husbands however parallel to the recent evidence of the declining labor market position of lower skilled men there has been a similar deterioration in the economic status of less educated women especially high school dropouts their labor force participation rates and wages have risen at a much slower pace than those of more highly educated women while their incidence of single headship has increased much more rapidly these findings for less educated women serve to underscore the widening gap between more and less skilled americans of both sexes as well as to emphasize its broad dimensions

the impact of corporate governance on investment returns in developed and developing countries we shed light on three conundrums in the literature on investment why investments out of different sources of finance earn different returns why different studies report different patterns of returns across sources of finance and why companies in developing countries make greater use of external equity capital to finance their investment than do companies in developed countries we show that the strength of corporate governance systems affects the preferred source of financing which in turn helps to explain why investments financed in different ways exhibit significantly different rates of return we find considerable differences between developed and developing countries in the effectiveness of corporate governance systems in aligning managers and shareholders interests

rates of return on corporate investment in the last two decades productivity has lagged in the united states markets have been lost to foreign competition real income per capita has grown slowly this experience has led to considerable discussion of possible causes 7 one possible cause often mentioned is the quality of managerial investment decisions managers have been accused of overinvesting in obsolete technologies of underinvesting in risky projects with long run payoffs of undertaking unprofitable mergers and of overall poor judgment in their investment policies 39 this paper presents evidence on the returns on investment over the 1970 88 period for a sample of 699 large corporations that is consistent with this view

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

does drug use lower wages this study using microdata from the 1980 and 1984 waves of the national longitudinal survey of youth examines the effects of drug use on wages and employment contrary to most previous researcher