Discriminate Me – if You Can! The Disappearance of the Gender Pay Gap among Public-Contest Selected Employees

Carolina Castagnetti, Luisa Rosti () and Marina Töpfer ()
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Luisa Rosti: Department of Economics and Management, University of Pavia
Marina Töpfer: Institute of Economics, University of Hohenheim

No 158, DEM Working Papers Series from University of Pavia, Department of Economics and Management

Abstract: This paper analyzes the effect of public-contest recruitment on earnings for men and women using Italian microdata over a time period of ten years. We find that the gender pay gap vanishes, and even reverses among the young, when employees are selected through public contests. The results suggest that selection mechanisms such as public contests may offer a way for merit-based and gender-fair wage setting. However, since public contests and the public sector are highly correlated, we analyze the gender pay gap taking the interconnection between the public and private sector as well as the open contest issue into account. By decomposing our results by sector we find that public contests represent a necessary but not sufficient condition for merit-based and gender-fair recruitment. Similarly, the institutional environment of the public sector is a necessary but not sufficient condition for making public contests merit-based and gender-fair screening devices. These two factors taken together, cause the disappearance of the gender pay gap.

Keywords: Gender Pay Gap; Public-Contest Recruitment; Double Sample Selection. (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: J13 J31 J7 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 71 pages
Date: 2018-05
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-eur and nep-gen
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

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http://dem-web.unipv.it/web/docs/dipeco/quad/ps/RePEc/pav/demwpp/DEMWP0158.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Working Paper: Discriminate me - if you can! The disappearance of the gender pay gap among public-contest selected employees (2018)
Working Paper: Discriminate me - if you can! The Disappearance of the Gender Pay Gap among Public-Contest Selected Employees (2016)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:pav:demwpp:demwp0158

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