The reversal of the gender pay gap among public-contest selected young employees

Carolina Castagnetti, Luisa Rosti and Marina Töpfer

No 14-2015, Hohenheim Discussion Papers in Business, Economics and Social Sciences from University of Hohenheim, Faculty of Business, Economics and Social Sciences

Abstract: This paper analyzes the effect of public-contest recruitment on earnings by applying an extended version of the Oaxaca-Blinder model with double selection to microdata on Italy. We find that the gender pay gap vanishes among public-contest selected employees, and even reverses in favor of women (-17.4%) in the young sample. The reversal is because public contests are merit-based and gender-fair screening devices. They are merit-based because selected employees possess higher productive characteristics than unselected ones, both women and men. They are gender-fair because the coefficients component in the Oaxaca-Blinder decomposition is never significant among public-contest recruited employees, either with or without selection. On the contrary, among employees not hired by public contest the gender pay gap is positive and significant (7.6%), and it is entirely due to coefficients, that is to discrimination in the career path.

Keywords: Gender pay gap; Public-contest recruitment; Double sample selection (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2015
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:zbw:hohdps:142015

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