Gender wage transparency and the gender pay gap: A survey

Morten Bennedsen, Birthe Larsen*, Jiayi Wei

*Corresponding author af dette arbejde

Publikation: Bidrag til tidsskriftTidsskriftartikelForskningpeer review

3 Citationer (Scopus)
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Abstract

We survey the literature on the effects of increased transparency of gender segregated wages on the pay gap between men and women in comparable jobs. Pay transparency is promoted by countries and supra-national institutions and we categorize reforms according to their content and coverage. A growing number of papers have used variations of difference-in-difference estimation methods to analyze the impact of reforms on the gender pay gap (GPG), and from these we extract four main findings: First, reform-based studies find that pay transparency reforms reduce the GPG in all countries but one, which finds no effect. Second, in Canada, Denmark and the UK, the reduction in the GPG from transparency reforms originate from a reduction in the growth rate of male income and less from an increase in women's pay. Third, there is fragmented evidence for the impact of transparency reforms on other labor outcomes and firm productivity. Fourth, the monetary implementation cost of transparency reforms is, in general, small both for individual firms and public administration. These finding are consistent with the notion that gender wage transparency reforms are an effective policy tool to reduce the GPG.

OriginalsprogEngelsk
TidsskriftJournal of Economic Surveys
Vol/bind37
Udgave nummer5
Sider (fra-til)1743-1777
ISSN0950-0804
DOI
StatusUdgivet - 2023

Bibliografisk note

Funding Information:
We thank our coauthors Daniela Scur, Elena Simintzi, Margarita Tsoutsoura, and Daniel Wolfenzon for the use of published articles and unpublished working papers, an anonymous referee and seminar participants at Copenhagen Business School, INSEAD and University of Copenhagen. We also thank Aarushi Tulsiyan, JiYoung Kim, Aremis Chung, Maithili Dipak Modi, Jihye Jang, and Mengqi Li for excellent research assistance. We are grateful for financial funding from the Danish National Research Foundation (Niels Bohr Professorship) and the Danish Finance Institute.

Publisher Copyright:
© 2023 The Authors. Journal of Economic Surveys published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd.

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