Does Personality Matter? Noncognitive Skills and the Male Migrant Wage Gap in Germany

Wage gaps between migrants and natives persist in Germany, and traditional human capital endowments or work environments only partially explain these gaps. This article investigates whether noncognitive skills contribute to explaining male migrant wage gaps in Germany. While the economics literature shows that noncognitive skills affect educational and occupational outcomes, such as gender wage gaps, it is unclear if the same applies to the migrant wage gap. To address this lingering question, we analyze risk preference and the “Big Five Personality Dimensions,” a psychological concept categorizing an individual's personality into five factors. In doing so, we show that male migrants and male German natives differ in their average noncognitive skills and that these skills significantly relate to wages. The results of Oaxaca–Blinder wage decompositions reveal that noncognitive skills significantly contribute six percentage points to explaining the male migrant wage gap in Germany. We conclude that noncognitive skills are important predictors of heterogeneities in labor market outcomes.

Social Progress and Corporate Culture

Social progress through improved treatment of minority groups (e.g., forbidding racial or sexual harassment) may or may not spread to corporate cultures through competition. We provide a theory of corporate culture, and we show that emergent, progressive corporate cultures can displace existing, regressive ones only when the prevailing wage gap is large between majority and minority groups. Wider cultural differences between groups make progress less likely. The model provides testable predictions on racial and gender wage gaps across firms.

Gender Wage Gaps in Brazilian Companies Listed in the Ibovespa Index: A Critical Analysis

This article aims to perform a critical analysis of wage gaps according to gender from information provided by sustainability reports that were disseminated by Brazilian companies listed in the Ibovespa index. To conduct this analysis, bibliographic research was performed, followed by a deductive content analysis of sustainability reports from Brazilian companies listed in the Ibovespa index, considering item 405-2 of the Global Reporting Initiative standard. From this analysis, it was possible to show that only some companies disseminate detailed information related to the gender wage ratio. Many companies do not present this data or present it superficially. The findings of this research present important insights that may be used to motivate debates on the topic.