We combine stylized facts from social network literature with findings from the literature on the gender wage gap in a formal model. This model is based on employers’ use of social networks in the hiring process in order to assess employee productivity. As a result, there is a persistent gender wage gap, with women being underpaid relative to men after controlling for productivity characteristics. Networks exhibit inbreeding biases by productivity and by gender, which in combination with women’s lower network density cause women to be hired less often through referral, as well as receive a lower average referral wage premium. Finally, we use 2001-2006 UK Labour Force Survey data to test the hypotheses implied by our model. We find that networks do indeed account for a significant part of the gender wage gap for newly hired workers.
Download Info
To download:
If you experience problems downloading a file, check if you have the
proper application to
view it first. Information about this may be contained
in the File-Format links below. In case of further problems read
the IDEAS help
page. Note that these files are not on the IDEAS
site. Please be patient as the files may be large.
Cited by: (explanations, Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.)