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on Human Capital and Human Resource Management |
| By: | Bryson, Alex (University College London); Dale-Olsen, Harald (Institute for Social Research, Oslo) |
| Abstract: | Norwegian workers' job mobility decisions are related to firms' wage policies, but also depend on the national tax schedule. By utilising Norwegian population-wide administrative linked employer-employee data on workers and firms between 2010-2019, we study how the job-to-job turnover of employees is affected by marginal taxes and firms' pay policies, enabling inferences to be made about on-the-job search. Paying higher wages is associated with a drop in job-to-job separation rates, but this negative relationship is weakened when income taxes increase. Higher taxes imply strictly reduced search activity, but less so for bonus job-workers than salaried workers. |
| Keywords: | job search, marginal taxes, monopsony, wages, effort |
| JEL: | H24 J42 J63 M12 |
| Date: | 2024–10 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp17385 |
| By: | Mehrzad B. Baktash |
| Abstract: | Increased wages and productivity associated with performance pay can be beneficial to both employers and employees. However, performance pay can also entail unintended consequences for workers’ well-being. This study is the first to systematically examine the association between performance pay and loneliness, a significant social well-being concern. Using representative survey data from Germany, I find that performance pay is positively associated with incidence, dimensions, and intensity of loneliness. Correspondingly, performance pay is negatively associated with social life satisfaction of the workers. The findings also hold in sensible instrumental variable estimations addressing the potential endogeneity of performance pay and in various robustness checks. Investigating the potential role of moderating factors reveals that the association between performance pay and loneliness is particularly large for private sector employees. Finally, implications are discussed. |
| Keywords: | Performance Pay, Loneliness, Social Life, Well-Being, SOEP |
| JEL: | J33 I31 J32 I10 |
| Date: | 2024 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:trr:wpaper:202412 |
| By: | von Essen, Emma (Uppsala University); Smith, Nina (Aarhus University) |
| Abstract: | The paper explores the impact of the gender composition of Boards of Directors on gender diversity and earnings gaps among executive management using administrative data on all Danish private sector firms from 1995 to 2018. We find that it is not the quantity of women directors but the quality of the women entering the board that matters in generating positive spillovers on the gender gaps within the firms. Quality is viewed as the power, conceptualized as the possible influence in the boardroom, and operationalized as the position and board experience of the directors. A way of channeling power is also through the director's networks. Powerful women directors increase spillovers, while male directors have a negative impact. However, male directors' connections to females positively decrease the gender gaps. Interestingly, the spillovers are not large enough to generate a sustained change in the gender composition of the executive board, mainly because women executives exit to a larger extent than men. |
| Keywords: | board of directors, gender diversity, spillover effects |
| JEL: | J16 M12 M51 |
| Date: | 2024–10 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp17401 |
| By: | Carlos F. Avenancio-León; Alessio Piccolo; Leslie Sheng Shen |
| Abstract: | After the gender pay gap narrows, what labor choices do men and women make? Several factors contribute to the persistence of the pay gap, such as workplace flexibility, systemic discrimination, and career costs of family. We show that how the labor market responds to the narrowing of the gap is just as pivotal for understanding this persistence. When the gender pay gap declines in a specific sector, women are relatively more likely to seek jobs in that sector, while men readjust their search to less equitable sectors. These compositional effects decrease female participation in less equitable sectors, which typically offer higher wages, reinforcing gender stereotypes and social norms that contribute to the glass ceiling. Through these effects, the same forces that reduce the gender pay gap at the bottom of the pay distribution also contribute to the persistence of gender inequities at the top. This self-reinforcing cycle underscores the need for reforms that are cross-sectoral and comprehensive to effectively achieve meaningful reductions in gender inequities across the labor market. |
| Keywords: | gender pay gap; bank deregulation |
| JEL: | J16 J71 O16 |
| Date: | 2024–11–01 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:fip:fedbwp:99067 |
| By: | Christina Brinkmann; Simon Jäger; Moritz Kuhn; Farzad Saidi; Stefanie Wolter |
| Abstract: | Governments use short-time work (STW) schemes to subsidize job preservation during crises. We study the take-up of STW and its effects on worker outcomes and firm behavior using German administrative data from 2009 to 2021. Establishments utilizing STW tend to have higher wages, be larger, and have falling employment even before STW take-up. More adverse selection occurred during the COVID-19 pandemic. Within firms, STW is targeted towards workers likely to stay even in the absence of STW. To study the effects of STW, we examine two dimensions of policy variation: STW eligibility and extensions of potential benefit duration (PBD). Workers above retirement age, ineligible for STW, have identical employment trajectories compared to their slightly younger, eligible peers when their establishment takes up STW. A 2012 reform doubling PBD from 6 to 12 months did not secure employment at treated firms 12 months afer take-up, with minimal heterogeneity across worker characteristics. However, treated and control firms experienced substantial and persistent differences in their wage trajectories, with control firms without extensions lowering wages compared to treated firms. Across cells, larger wage effects corresponded with smaller employment effects, consistent with downward wage flexibility preventing layoffs and substituting for the employment protection effects of STW. Our research designs reveal that STW extensions in Germany did not significantly improve short- or long-term employment outcomes. |
| Keywords: | stabilization policies, short-time work, wage rigidity, labor market institutions, intra- firm insurance |
| JEL: | J01 J08 J30 J41 |
| Date: | 2024–11 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:bon:boncrc:crctr224_2024_606 |
| By: | Hugo Sant'Anna |
| Abstract: | In this paper, I introduce a novel decomposition method based on Gaussian mixtures and k-Means clustering, applied to a large Brazilian administrative dataset, to analyze the gender wage gap through the lens of worker-firm interactions shaped by comparative advantage. These interactions generate wage levels in logs that exceed the simple sum of worker and firm components, making them challenging for traditional linear models to capture effectively. I find that these ``complementarity effects'' account for approximately 17% of the gender wage gap. Larger firms, high human capital, STEM degrees, and managerial roles are closely related to it. For instance, among managerial occupations, the match effect goes as high as one-third of the total gap. I also find women are less likely to be employed by firms offering higher returns to both human capital and firm-specific premiums, resulting in a significantly larger firm contribution to the gender wage gap than previously estimated. Combined, these factors explain nearly half of the overall gender wage gap, suggesting the importance of understanding firm-worker matches in addressing gender-based pay disparities. |
| Date: | 2024–11 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:arx:papers:2411.03209 |
| By: | Banerjee, Rakesh (University of Exeter); Bharati, Tushar (University of Western Australia Business School); Fakir, Adnan (University of Sussex); Qian, Yiwei (Southwestern University of Finance and Economics); Sunder, Naveen (Bentley University) |
| Abstract: | We conduct an experiment on a major international online freelancing labor market platform to study the impact of greater flexibility in choosing work hours within a day on female participation. We post identical job advertisements (for 320 jobs) covering a wide range of tasks (80 distinct tasks) that differ only in flexibility and the wage offered. Comparing the numbers of applicants for these jobs, we find that while both men and women prefer flexibility, the elasticity of response for women is twice that for the men. Flexible jobs receive 24 percent more female applications and 12 percent more male applications compared to inflexible jobs. Critically, these changes come at no cost to the quality of applications. In fact, we find suggestive evidence that flexible jobs attract higher quality female candidates. Our findings have important implications for explaining gender differences in labor market outcomes and for equity initiatives in firms. |
| Keywords: | workplace flexibility, online freelancing jobs, female labor force participation |
| JEL: | J22 O14 J16 L86 |
| Date: | 2024–11 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp17434 |
| By: | Marco Caliendo; Katrin Huber; Ingo E. Isphording; Jakob Wegmann |
| Abstract: | Surveys are an indispensable source of data for applied economic research; however, their reliance on self-reported information can introduce bias, especially if core variables such as personal income are misreported. To assess the extent and impact of this misreporting bias, we compare self-reported wages from the German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP) with administrative wages from social security records (IEB) for the same individuals. Using a novel and unique data linkage (SOEP-ADIAB), we identify a modest but economically significant reporting bias, with SOEP respondents underreporting their administrative wages by about 7.3%. This misreporting varies systematically with individual, household, and especially job and firm characteristics. In replicating common empirical analyses in which wages serve as either dependent or independent variables, we find that misreporting is consequential for some, but not all estimated relationships. It turns out to be inconsequential for examining the returns to education, but relevant for analyzing the gender wage gap. In addition we find that misreporting bias can significantly affect the results when wage is used as the independent variable. Specifically, estimates of the wage-satisfaction relationship are substantially overestimated when based on survey data, although this bias is mitigated when focusing on interpersonal changes. Our findings underscore that survey-based measures of individual wages can significantly bias commonly estimated empirical relationships. They also demonstrate the enormous research potential of linked administrative-survey data. |
| Date: | 2024–11 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:arx:papers:2411.04751 |