The reversal of the gender pay gap among public-contest selected young employees

Arbeitspapier

This paper analyzes the effect of public-contest recruitment on earnings by applying an extended version of the Oaxaca-Blinder model with double selection to microdata on Italy. We find that the gender pay gap vanishes among public-contest selected employees, and even reverses in favor of women (-17.4%) in the young sample. The reversal is because public contests are merit-based and gender-fair screening devices. They are merit-based because selected employees possess higher productive characteristics than unselected ones, both women and men. They are gender-fair because the coefficients component in the Oaxaca-Blinder decomposition is never significant among public-contest recruited employees, either with or without selection. On the contrary, among employees not hired by public contest the gender pay gap is positive and significant (7.6%), and it is entirely due to coefficients, that is to discrimination in the career path.

Object Details

• Language: Englisch

References and Relationships

• Bibliographic citation: Series: Hohenheim Discussion Papers in Business, Economics and Social Sciences ; No. 14-2015

Classification and Topics

• Classification: Wirtschaft
• Subject: Gender pay gap ; Public-contest recruitment ; Double sample selection

Contributors, Places and Time

• Event: Geistige Schöpfung
• (who): Castagnetti, Carolina ; Rosti, Luisa ; Töpfer, Marina
• Event: Veröffentlichung
• (who): Universität Hohenheim, Fakultät Wirtschafts- und Sozialwissenschaften
• (where): Stuttgart
• (when): 2015

Further information

• Handle: http://hdl.handle.net/10419/125874
• URN: urn:nbn:de:bsz:100-opus-11709
• Last update: 10.03.2025, 11:46 AM CET