Do Women Respond Less to Performance Pay? Building Evidence from Multiple Experiments

Existing empirical work raises the hypothesis that performance pay—whatever its output gains—may widen the gender earnings gap because women may respond less to incentives. We evaluate this possibility by aggregating evidence from existing experiments on performance incentives with male and female subjects. Using a Bayesian hierarchical model, we estimate both the average effect and heterogeneity across studies. We find that the gender response difference is close to zero and heterogeneity across studies is small, while performance pay increases output by 0.36 standard deviations on average. The data thus support agency theory for men and women alike. (JEL C11, C90, J16, J31, J33)

Gender Earnings Gap among Urban Youth Adults in Bangladesh: A Comparative Static Analysis

Despite the importance and recognition of young women's engagement in income-generating activities for socio-economic development, the gender earnings gap still persists across countries, especially in developing countries like Bangladesh. This study presents two datasets from the most recent past to provide fresh evidence for Bangladesh’s urban labor market that has yet to be closely studied. Using individual-level data from the BBS’s (Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics) Labour Force Surveys (LFS) conducted in 2010 and 2015, we have explored the gender earnings gap among the youth (aged 18 to 35 as per Bangladesh’s National Youth Policy 2017) working and earning in the urban labor markets of Bangladesh by applying the three approaches: Mincerian regression, Oaxaca-Blinder decomposition and Quantile regression. The first approach confirms that young women earn significantly less than young men in the urban labor markets after controlling the influences of the covariates. The detailed decomposition results of the second approach indicate that gender differences in hours worked, education, firm characteristics and locations also contribute to the gender earnings gap and the market discrimination against the youth women’s earnings remain the same over the years. The third approach using the lens of distribution perspective shows that earnings gaps persist up to the 25th percentile of distribution in 2010 though it persists across the entire earnings distribution in 2015. The results suggest that engaging more women in income-generating activities, increasing the number of hours worked, improving access to higher education and creating enabling working environment for women might reduce the gender earnings gap.

Electoral Competition, Voter Bias, and Women in Politics

We quantify the implications of voter bias and electoral competition for politicians’ gender composition. Unfavorable voters’ attitudes toward women and local gender earnings gap correlate negatively with the share of female candidates in Parliamentary elections. Using within-candidate variation across the different polling stations of an electoral district in a given election year, we find that female candidates obtain fewer votes in municipalities with higher gender earnings gaps. We show theoretically that when voters are biased against women, parties facing gender quotas select male candidates in the most contestable districts. We find empirical support for such a strategic party response to voter gender bias. Simulating our calibrated model confirms that competition significantly hinders the effectiveness of gender quotas.

An Explanation of a Gender Earnings Gap in the Veterinary Profession

Analysis of a unique data set of U.S. veterinary firms and veterinarians provides evidence of significant differences in earnings between self-employed males and females. After controlling for important concomitant variables, including training and experience, self-employed female veterinarians generally own smaller clinics and have lower earnings than their male counterparts. This study considers which demographic/economic factors may be associated with observed gender differences in earnings. The gender gap for average earnings is about 44 percent; however, when controlling for certain characteristics, the gap narrows to as little as 23 percent, depending on the model specification. Firm size was found to be the strongest contributing factor in explaining the gender gap in earnings, and so, possible explanations for differences in firm size have also been discussed. Whilst the analysis is not conclusive, there is evidence that self-employed females may face customer discrimination, which may constrain the growth and size of female-owned firms. (JEL D21) Keywords: Gender differences, salaries, self-employment, veterinarians

The Gender Earnings Gap in the Gig Economy: Evidence from over a Million Rideshare Drivers

The growth of the “gig” economy generates worker flexibility that, some have speculated, will favor women. We explore this by examining labor supply choices and earnings among more than a million rideshare drivers on Uber in the United States. We document a roughly 7% gender earnings gap amongst drivers. We show that this gap can be entirely attributed to three factors: experience on the platform (learning-by-doing), preferences and constraints over where to work (driven largely by where drivers live and, to a lesser extent, safety), and preferences for driving speed. We do not find that men and women are differentially affected by a taste for specific hours, a return to within-week work intensity, or customer discrimination. Our results suggest that, in a “gig” economy setting with no gender discrimination and highly flexible labor markets, women’s relatively high opportunity cost of non-paid-work time and gender-based differences in preferences and constraints can sustain a gender pay gap.