Overconfidence and Gender Differences in Wage Expectations

Stephanie Briel (), Aderonke Osikominu (), Gregor Pfeifer, Mirjam Reutter () and Sascha Satlukal ()
Additional contact information
Stephanie Briel: University of Hohenheim
Aderonke Osikominu: University of Hohenheim
Mirjam Reutter: European University Institute
Sascha Satlukal: University of Hohenheim

No 13517, IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)

Abstract: We analyze the impact of (over-)confidence on gender differences in expected starting salaries using elicited beliefs of prospective university students in Germany. According to our results, female students have lower wage expectations and are less overconfident than their male counterparts. Oaxaca-Blinder decompositions of the mean show that 7.7% of the gender gap in wage expectations is attributable to a higher overconfidence of males. Decompositions of the unconditional quantiles of expected salaries suggest that the contribution of gender differences in confidence to the gender gap is particularly strong at the bottom and top of the wage expectation distribution.

Keywords: gender pay gap; wage expectations; overconfidence; decomposition analyses; unconditional quantile regressions (RIF-Regressions) (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C21 D84 D91 J16 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 45 pages
Date: 2020-07
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-gen, nep-hrm and nep-lab
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (5)

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Working Paper: Overconfidence and gender differences in wage expectations (2020)
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