American Economic Journal:
Applied Economics
ISSN 1945-7782 (Print) | ISSN 1945-7790 (Online)
Pay Transparency and the Gender Gap
American Economic Journal: Applied Economics
vol. 15,
no. 2, April 2023
(pp. 157–83)
Abstract
We examine the impact of public sector salary disclosure laws on university faculty salaries in Canada. The laws, which enable public access to the salaries of individual faculty if they exceed specified thresholds, were introduced in different provinces at different times. Using detailed administrative data covering the majority of faculty in Canada, and an event-study research design that exploits within-province variation in exposure to the policy across institutions and academic departments, we find robust evidence that the laws reduced the gender pay gap between men and women by approximately 20–40 percent.Citation
Baker, Michael, Yosh Halberstam, Kory Kroft, Alexandre Mas, and Derek Messacar. 2023. "Pay Transparency and the Gender Gap." American Economic Journal: Applied Economics 15 (2): 157–83. DOI: 10.1257/app.20210141Additional Materials
JEL Classification
- I23 Higher Education; Research Institutions
- J16 Economics of Gender; Non-labor Discrimination
- J31 Wage Level and Structure; Wage Differentials
- J44 Professional Labor Markets; Occupational Licensing
- K31 Labor Law