Gender Differences in Wage Expectations

Ana Fernandes, Martin Huber and Giannina Vaccaro ()

No 516, FSES Working Papers from Faculty of Economics and Social Sciences, University of Freiburg/Fribourg Switzerland

Abstract: Using a survey on wage expectations among students at two Swiss institutions of higher education, we examine the wage expectations of our respondents along two main lines. First, we investigate the rationality of wage expectations by comparing average expected wages from our sample with those of similar graduates; we further examine how our respondents revise their expectations when provided information about actual wages. Second, using causal mediation analysis, we test whether the consideration of a rich set of personal and professional controls, namely concerning family formation and children in addition to professional preferences, accounts for the difference in wage expectations across genders. We find that males and females overestimate their wages compared to actual ones, and that males respond in an overconfident manner to information about outside wages. Despite the attenuation of the gender difference in wage expectations brought about by the comprehensive set of controls, gender generally retains a significant direct, unexplained effect on wage expectations.

Keywords: Wage expectations; gender wage differences; mediation; direct effect; indirect effect; experiment (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C21 J16 J31 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 32 pages
Date: 2020-05-01
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-edu, nep-exp and nep-lab
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

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Journal Article: Gender differences in wage expectations (2021)
Working Paper: Gender Differences in Wage Expectations (2020)
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