Joan Robinson Meets Harold Hotelling: A Dyopsonistic Explanation of the Gender Pay Gap

Boris Hirsch

No 24, Working Papers from Bavarian Graduate Program in Economics (BGPE)

Abstract: This paper presents an alternative explanation of the gender pay gap resting on a simple Hotelling-style dyopsony model of the labor market. Since there are only two employers equally productive women and men have to commute and face travel cost to do so. We assume that a fraction of the women have higher travel cost, e.g., due to more domestic responsibilities. Employers exploit that women are less inclined to commute to their competitor and offer lower wages to women. Since women’s labor supply at the firm level is for this reason less wage-elastic, this model presents an explanation of wage discrimination in line with Robinson (1933).

Keywords: monopsony; gender; discrimination (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: J16 J42 J71 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 24 pages
Date: 2007-06
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (7)

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https://www.bgpe.de/files/2024/05/024Hirsch2.pdf First version, 2007 (application/pdf)

Related works:
Working Paper: Joan Robinson Meets Harold Hotelling: A Dyopsonistic Explanation of the Gender Pay Gap (2007)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:bav:wpaper:024_hirsch2

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