Gender wage inequality and rent-sharing

Abstract

"In a perfectly competitive labour market wages are only determined by productivity characteristics; labour is remunerated with their marginal product. But in the real world we observe huge wage differences not attributable to productivity characteristics. We observe wage differences between industries (Krueger and Summers, 1988), between firms (Abowd, Kramarz and Margolis, 1999) and between gender (Blau and Kahn, 2000).<br> The main reasons for the wage differences between industries and firms discussed in literature are efficiency wages and wage-bargaining at firm or industrial level. Workers can try to extract rents by bargaining power to receive higher wages. They share rents with the employer, which leads to a correlation of profits with wages.<br> A reason for gender differences in wages is, as Groshen (1991) and Bayard et al. (1999) show, that women work in other industries, in other firms, and in other occupations than men with the same qualification.<br> It may be that gender-specific sorting between and within firms leads to different opportunities for male and female employees to extract rents. The aim of this study is to investigate gender differences in rent-sharing for Germany by using a linked employer-employee data-set." (Author's abstract, IAB-Doku) ((en))

Cite article

Gartner, H. (2006): Gender wage inequality and rent-sharing. Evidence from a German linked employer-employee dataset. In: B. Mahy, R. Plasman & F. Rycx (Hrsg.) (2006): Gender pay differentials : cross-national evidence from micro-data, p. 118-131.