Is French Gender Pay Gap Transparency Legislation Effective?

Mia Vorster

Warwick-Monash Economics Student Papers from Warwick Monash Economics Student Papers

Abstract: This paper examines the impact of France’s 2018 gender pay gap transparency law which implements a 100 point gender equity index and two corrective measure thresholds (firms below 85 must publish an action plan; those below 75 for three years are fined) for firms with more than 50 employees. I use firm-level reports with a regression discontinuity design and event-time study to assess the effectiveness of the thresholds in changing firm behaviour, finding evidence that firms improve their gender equity in order to avoid fines below the 75 threshold. I use an individual-level administrative dataset which I transform into a pseudopanel and a difference-in-difference strategy around the 50 employee threshold to assess the overall impact of the policy, finding a 3.7 percentage point increase in women’s hourly wages relative to men in treated firms. This effect is primary driven by a fall in male wages.

Keywords: Gender Pay Gap; Pseudo-Panel; Wage Transparency; Public Policy; Gender Pay; Gap Reporting JEL classifications: J16; J78; K38 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2026
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://warwick.ac.uk/fac/soc/economics/research/wmesp/manage/93-vorster.pdf

Related works:
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:wrk:wrkesp:93

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Warwick-Monash Economics Student Papers from Warwick Monash Economics Student Papers Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Margaret Nash ().