Monopsonistic Discrimination, Worker Turnover, and the Gender Wage Gap

Motivated by models of worker flows, we argue in this paper that monopsonistic discrimination may be a substantial factor behind the overall gender wage gap. On matched employer-employee data from Norway, we estimate establishment-specific wage premiums separately for men and women, conditioning on fixed individual effects. Regressions of worker turnover on the wage premium identify less wage elastic labour supply facing each establishment of women than that of men. Workforce gender composition is strongly related to employers' wage policies. The results suggest that 70-90 percent of the gender wage gap for low-educated workers may be attributed to differences in labour market frictions between men and women, while the similar figures for high-educated workers ranges from 20 to 70 percent.monopsony, gender wage gap

Monopsonistic Discrimination and the Gender-Wage Gap

Models of worker flows have revitalized the idea of monopsony in the labor market. We apply such a model to gender differences. We argue that monopsonistic discrimination may be a substantial factor behind the overall gender wage gap, in particular with respect to differences arising between occupations and establishments. Using matched employer-employee data from Norway, we investigate the wage structure within and between establishments, and present novel evidence that the establishments' excess turnover of employees is sensitive to the wage premium of men, but not to the wage premium of women. Furthermore, we show that male turnover is more wage-elastic than female turnover.

Immigrant Wage Profiles Within and Between Establishments

Life cycle wages of immigrants from developing countries fall short of catching up with wages of natives. This disparity reflects both lower wages at entry and lower wage growth. Using linked employer-employee data, we show that 40 percent of the native-immigrant wage gap is explained by differential sorting across establishments. Our findings point to differences in job mobility and intermittent spells of unemployment as major sources of the discrepancy in lifetime wages. The inferior wage growth of immigrants primarily results from failure to advance to higher paying establishments over time. This pattern is consistent with statistical discrimination in hiring but not with monopsonistic discrimination due to informational frictions.

How Does Innovation Affect Worker Well-being?

We explore the effects of management innovations on worker well-being using private sector linked employer-employee data for Britain. We find management innovations are associated with lower worker well-being and lower job satisfaction, an effect which becomes more pronounced when we account for the endogeneity of innovation. This is the case for three different count measures of innovation - a global measure of innovation and measures for labour innovations and capital innovations. The effects are ameliorated when workers are covered by a collective bargaining agreement.innovation, well-being, job satisfaction, trade unions

Do Higher Wages Come at a Price?

Using linked employer-employee data for Britain we find job satisfaction and job anxiety are negatively correlated but higher wages are associated with higher job satisfaction and higher job anxiety. However, we observe a positive association between higher wages and non-pecuniary job satisfaction, which disappears with the inclusion of our effort measures. Thus high effort levels provide high levels of non-pecuniary job satisfaction and higher wages, in contrast to what compensating wage differentials predicts. On the other hand, the positive association between wages and pay satisfaction and the positive association between wages and job anxiety are both robust to the inclusion of our effort measures and rich job controls. Mean wages of co-workers are positively associated with pay satisfaction but there is no significant association with non-pecuniary job satisfaction or job anxiety. Thus there is a positive spill-over to workers from being in a high-wage workplace and there is no support for the proposition that within-workplace wage differentials are a source of job anxiety.worker wellbeing, job stress, job anxiety, job satisfaction, wages, compensating differentials

Performance Pay and Within-Firm Wage Inequality

This paper examines the impact of performance-related pay on wage differentials within firms. Our theoretical framework predicts that, compared to a fixed pay system, pay schemes based on individual output increase within-firm wage inequality, while group-based bonuses have minor effects on wage dispersion. Theory also predicts an interaction between performance-related pay and union bargaining, where union power reduces the impact of performance pay on wage dispersion. The empirical contribution utilizes two recent Norwegian employer surveys, linked to a full set of individual employee pay records. A longitudinal sub-sample allows for identification based on fixed establishment effects. Introduction of performance-related pay is shown to raise residual wage inequality in nonunion firms, but not in firms with high union density. Our findings suggest that even though performance-related pay appears to be on the rise, the overall impact on wage dispersion is likely to be small, particularly in European countries with strong unions.performance related pay, wage inequality, union bargaining

Employment as a Price or a Prize of Equality: A Descriptive Analysis

To put Scandinavian employment in perspective, we ask whether wage compression hampers employment rates, or not. We answer by reviewing the most important theoretical arguments and the most informative regularities across countries with different wage distributions. The pattern seems to be that countries with compressed wage distributions tend to have higher employment, and countries with higher wage inequality tend to have lower employment. This also holds when we consider the rate of labor force participation. In line with the theoretical arguments, coordination in wage bargaining seems to contribute to both employment expansion and wage compression. There is a clear positive correlation between coordination and employment even when we control for inequality, country, and year-specific effects

The Equality Multiplier

Equality can multiply due to the complementarity between wage determination and welfare spending. A more equal wage distribution fuels welfare generosity via political competition. A more generous welfare state fuels wage equality further via its support to weak groups in the labor market. Together the two effects generate a cumulative process that adds up to an important social multiplier. We focus on a political economic equilibrium which incorporates this mutual dependence between wage setting and welfare spending. It explains how almost equally rich countries differ in economic and social equality among their citizens and why countries cluster around different worlds of welfare capitalism---the Scandinavian model, the Anglo-Saxon model and the Continental model. Using data on 18 OECD countries over the period 1976-2002 we test the main predictions of the model and identify a sizeable magnitude of the equality multiplier. We obtain additional support for the cumulative complementarity between social spending and wage equality by applying another data set for the US over the period 1945-2001.

Fair tax evasion

In this paper we analyse how fairness considerations, in particular considerations of just income distribution, affect whether or not people believe tax evasion can be justified and their willingness to engage in tax evasion. Using data from the Norwegian “Hidden Labour Market Survey” we show that individuals with low wages or long working hours, individuals that are treated unfairly by most tax systems, have a higher probability of justifying tax evasion. The same individuals are also more willing to take home income without reporting it to the tax authorities. These results are consistent with a model in which individuals make a trade-off between economic gains and fairness considerations when they make decisions about tax evasion. Taken together our results suggest that considerations of fair income distribution are important for the analysis of tax evasion

The dynamics of gender earnings differentials: Evidence from establishment data

Despite dramatic workforce gains by women in recent decades, a substantial gender earnings gap persists and widens over the course of men’s and women’s careers. Since there are earnings differences across establishments, a key question is the extent to which the widening of the gender pay gap over time arises from differences in career advances within the same establishment versus differential gains from job-to-job moves across establishments. Using a unique match between the 2000 Decennial Census of the United States and the Longitudinal Employer Household Dynamics (LEHD) data, we find that both channels are important and affect workers differently by education. For the college-educated the increasing gap is for the most part due to differential earnings growth within establishment. The between-establishment component explains only 27 percent of the widening of the total gender pay gap for this group. For workers without college degree, the establishment component is the main driver of the, relatively small, widening of the gender earnings gap. For both education groups, marriage plays a crucial role in the establishment component of the increasing earnings gap.acceptedVersio