IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/labeco/v94y2025ics0927537125000259.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Gender differences in reservation wages in search experiments

Author

Listed:
  • McGee, Andrew
  • McGee, Peter

Abstract

Women report setting lower reservation wages than men in survey data. We show that women set reservation wages that are 14 to 18 percent lower than men's in laboratory search experiments that control for factors not fully observed in surveys such as offer distributions and outside options. This gender gap—which exists even controlling for overconfidence, preferences, personality, and intelligence—leads women to spend less time searching than men while accepting lower wages. More risk tolerant women set reservation wages that are too low early in search relative to theoretically optimal reservation wages given their risk preferences, reducing their earnings.

Suggested Citation

  • McGee, Andrew & McGee, Peter, 2025. "Gender differences in reservation wages in search experiments," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 94(C).
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:labeco:v:94:y:2025:i:c:s0927537125000259
    DOI: 10.1016/j.labeco.2025.102698
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0927537125000259
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.labeco.2025.102698?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Reservation wages; Gender wage gaps; Search experiments; Jel codes: j16; J64; C91;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • J64 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Mobility, Unemployment, Vacancies, and Immigrant Workers - - - Unemployment: Models, Duration, Incidence, and Job Search
    • C91 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Design of Experiments - - - Laboratory, Individual Behavior

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:labeco:v:94:y:2025:i:c:s0927537125000259. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/labeco .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.