Arbeitspapier
Closing the gender gap in salary increases: Evidence from a field experiment on promoting pay equity
We present a natural field experiment on promoting pay equity through simple modifications to the salary review process involving 623 middle managers and 8,951 subordinate employees of a large technology firm.We first document a gender gap not only in salary levels but also in salary increases. Our treatments provide for a gender-neutral reallocation of the salary increase budget available to middle managers aimed at promoting pay equity, along with different variants of a corresponding decision guidance. We show that the budget reallocation combined with an explicit decision guidance, while still leaving managers discretion in allocating the budget, can completely eliminate the gender gap in salary increases. The treatments also do not appear to undermine desired performance differentiation in salary increases. We thus show that simple modifications to the salary review process can go a long way toward achieving pay equity, preventing the widening of gender gaps throughout the career.
- Language
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Englisch
- Bibliographic citation
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Series: ECONtribute Discussion Paper ; No. 244
- Classification
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Wirtschaft
Wage Level and Structure; Wage Differentials
Labor Discrimination
Personnel Economics: Compensation and Compensation Methods and Their Effects
- Subject
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Randomized Controlled Trial
Pay equity
Gender pay gap
Salary structure
- Event
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Geistige Schöpfung
- (who)
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Alfitian, Jakob
Deversi, Marvin
Sliwka, Dirk
- Event
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Veröffentlichung
- (who)
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University of Bonn and University of Cologne, Reinhard Selten Institute (RSI)
- (where)
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Bonn and Cologne
- (when)
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2023
- Handle
- Last update
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10.03.2025, 11:44 AM CET
Data provider
ZBW - Deutsche Zentralbibliothek für Wirtschaftswissenschaften - Leibniz-Informationszentrum Wirtschaft. If you have any questions about the object, please contact the data provider.
Object type
- Arbeitspapier
Associated
- Alfitian, Jakob
- Deversi, Marvin
- Sliwka, Dirk
- University of Bonn and University of Cologne, Reinhard Selten Institute (RSI)
Time of origin
- 2023
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