Is There a Gap in the Gap? Regional Differences in the Gender Pay Gap

Boris Hirsch, Marion König () and Joachim Möller
Additional contact information
Marion König: Institute for Employment Research (IAB), Nuremberg

No 4231, IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)

Abstract: In this paper, we investigate regional differences in the gender pay gap both theoretically and empirically. Within a spatial oligopsony model, we show that more densely populated labour markets are more competitive and constrain employers' ability to discriminate against women. Utilising a large administrative data set for western Germany and a flexible semi-parametric propensity score matching approach, we find that the unexplained gender pay gap for young workers is substantially lower in large metropolitan than in rural areas. This regional gap in the gap of roughly ten percentage points remained surprisingly constant over the entire observation period of thirty years.

Keywords: matching; urban-rural differences; gender pay gap; monopsonistic discrimination (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: J16 J42 J71 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 30 pages
Date: 2009-06
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-geo, nep-lab and nep-ure
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (10)

Published - published in: Scottish Journal of Political Economy, 2013, 60 (4), 412-439

Downloads: (external link)
https://docs.iza.org/dp4231.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: Is There a Gap in the Gap? Regional Differences in the Gender Pay Gap (2013)
Working Paper: Is There a Gap in the Gap? Regional Differences in the Gender Pay Gap (2009)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:iza:izadps:dp4231

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
IZA, Margard Ody, P.O. Box 7240, D-53072 Bonn, Germany

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA) IZA, P.O. Box 7240, D-53072 Bonn, Germany. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Holger Hinte ().