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-blind 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 middle managers discretion in allocating the budget, can completely eliminate the gender gap in salary increases. The treatments also do not appear to undermine the 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 by preventing gender gaps from widening throughout employees' careers.

Sprache
Englisch

Erschienen in
Series: IZA Discussion Papers ; No. 16278

Klassifikation
Wirtschaft
Wage Level and Structure; Wage Differentials
Labor Discrimination
Personnel Economics: Compensation and Compensation Methods and Their Effects
Thema
gender pay gap
pay equity
randomized controlled trial
salary structure

Ereignis
Geistige Schöpfung
(wer)
Alfitian, Jakob
Deversi, Marvin
Sliwka, Dirk
Ereignis
Veröffentlichung
(wer)
Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)
(wo)
Bonn
(wann)
2023

Handle
Letzte Aktualisierung
10.03.2025, 11:43 MEZ

Datenpartner

Dieses Objekt wird bereitgestellt von:
ZBW - Deutsche Zentralbibliothek für Wirtschaftswissenschaften - Leibniz-Informationszentrum Wirtschaft. Bei Fragen zum Objekt wenden Sie sich bitte an den Datenpartner.

Objekttyp

  • Arbeitspapier

Beteiligte

  • Alfitian, Jakob
  • Deversi, Marvin
  • Sliwka, Dirk
  • Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)

Entstanden

  • 2023

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