Search Results
Journal Article
The gender wage gap and wage discrimination: illusion or reality?
The wage gap between men and women is not as large as you think, nor is it entirely due to discrimination.
Working Paper
What determines public support for affirmative action?
We present a model of public higher education finance in which demand for educational services can exceed supply because of indivisibilities in educational investment. In such situations, a screening mechanism--which may be imperfect because of direct or indirect discrimination--is required for allocation. We show how changes in the education premium affect political support for affirmative action policies. When the education premium is relatively low, the matching efficiency gains provided by affirmative action policies are relatively high compared to the opportunity cost of not acquiring ...
Journal Article
Women's wages
Working Paper
Race, wages, and assimilation among Cuban immigrants
This study uses data from the 1980 and 1990 Census and the 1994-2000 Current Population Survey to examine the determinants of earnings among male Cuban immigrants in the United States by race. Nonwhite Cuban immigrants earn about 15 percent less than whites, on average. Much of the racial wage gap is due to differences in educational attainment, age at migration, and years in the United States, but the gap remains at almost 4 percent after controlling for such factors. Nonwhite Cuban immigrants also have lower returns to education than whites. A comparison to white, non-Hispanic U.S. natives ...
Working Paper
Displacement, asymmetric information and heterogeneous human capital
In a seminal paper Gibbons and Katz (1991; GK) develop and empirically test an asymmetric information model of the labor market. The model predicts that wage losses following displacement should be larger for layoffs than for plant closings, which was borne out by data from the Displaced Workers Survey (DWS). In this paper, we take advantage of many more years of DWS data to examine how the difference in wage losses across plant closing and layoff varies with race and gender. We find that the differences between white males and the other groups are striking and complex. The "lemons" effect ...
Report
Importing equality? The effects of increased competition on the gender wage gap
It is now well documented that the gender wage gap declined substantially in the 1980s, despite rising overall wage inequality. While Blau and Kahn (JoLE 1997) attribute much of this improvement to gains in women's relative labor market experience and other observable characteristics, a substantial part of the decline in the gender wage gap remains unexplained, and may be due to reduced discrimination against women in the labor market. This paper tests the hypothesis (based on Becker 1957) that increased globalization in the 1980s forced employers to reduce costly discrimination against women ...
Working Paper
Gender differences in salary and promotion for faculty in the humanities, 1977–95
This study uses data from the Survey of Doctorate Recipients to evaluate gender differences in salaries and promotion for academics in the humanities. Differences in employment outcomes by gender are evaluated using three methods: the Oaxaca decomposition is used to examine salary differentials, and binary choice models and duration analysis are used to estimate the probability of promotion to tenure. Over time, gender salary differences can largely be explained by academic rank. Substantial gender differences in promotion to tenure exist after controlling for productivity and demographic ...
Working Paper
Does science discriminate against women? Evidence from academia, 1973–97
This study uses data from the Survey of Doctorate Recipients to evaluate differences in employment outcomes for academic scientists by gender. A decomposition of estimated salary differences shows that over time, gender salary differences can partly be explained by differences in observable characteristics for faculty at the assistant and associate ranks. Substantial gender salary differences for full professors are not explained by observable characteristics. Probit and duration model estimates indicate gender differences in the probability of promotion, making it less likely for women to be ...