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How to Limit Discrimination? Analyzing the Effects of Innovative Workplace Practices on Intra-Firm Gender Wage Gaps Using Linked Employer-Employee Data

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  • Wolf, Elke
  • Heinze, Anja

Abstract

This paper provides a new approach to assess the impact of organisational changes fostering employee involvement, performance related pay schemes and other relevant trends in personnel policy on the gender wage gap. Our results indicate that innovative human resource practices tend to limit the wage differential between men and women. The innovation of this study is that we use linked employer-employee data to look at within-firm gender wage differentials. To investigate the theoretical hypotheses regarding the effect of selected human resource measures on gender wage inequality, we calculate a firm-specific gender wage gap accounting for differences in individual characteristics.

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  • Wolf, Elke & Heinze, Anja, 2007. "How to Limit Discrimination? Analyzing the Effects of Innovative Workplace Practices on Intra-Firm Gender Wage Gaps Using Linked Employer-Employee Data," ZEW Discussion Papers 07-077, ZEW - Leibniz Centre for European Economic Research.
    • Handle: RePEc:zbw:zewdip:6897
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    Cited by:

    1. Mari Kangasniemi & Antti Kauhanen, 2013. "Performance-related pay and gender wage differences," Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 45(36), pages 5131-5143, December.
    2. Anja Heinze & Elke Wolf, 2010. "The intra-firm gender wage gap: a new view on wage differentials based on linked employer–employee data," Journal of Population Economics, Springer;European Society for Population Economics, vol. 23(3), pages 851-879, June.

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    Keywords

    gender wage gap; within-firms wage differentials; organizational change; performance-related pay systems;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • J31 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Wages, Compensation, and Labor Costs - - - Wage Level and Structure; Wage Differentials
    • J16 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demographic Economics - - - Economics of Gender; Non-labor Discrimination

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