Salary History and Employer Demand: Evidence from a Two-Sided Audit

Amanda Y. Agan, Bo Cowgill and Laura K. Gee

American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, 2025, vol. 17, issue 3, 380-413

Abstract: We study how salary disclosures affect employer demand using a field experiment featuring hundreds of recruiters evaluating over 2,000 job applications. We randomize the presence of salary questions and the candidates' disclosures for male and female applicants. Our findings suggest that extra dollars disclosed yield higher salary offers, willingness to pay, and perceptions of outside options by recruiters (all similarly for men and women). Recruiters make negative inferences about the quality and bargaining positions of nondisclosing candidates, though they penalize silent women less.

JEL-codes: C93 D82 J22 J23 J31 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
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DOI: 10.1257/app.20230365

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