The wage curve, introduced by the seminal paper of Blanchflower and Oswald (1994) describes the inverse relationship between wages and regional unemployment. Empirical evidence suggests that gender specific wage curves exist. Based on the wage curve approach, I derive hypotheses on the relationship between the gender wage gap and the local unemployment rate as well as the effect of the unemployment rate in adjacent regions. Using a linked employer-employee data set (LIAB from the IAB) combining administrative wage information from the Federal Employment Agency with firm data from the establishment panel, I decompose the gender gap in local labor markets to calculate a human capital adjusted gender wage gap and use this as dependent variable in a regression on the local unemployment rate and on spatial unemployment. The analysis is conducted at the level of local labor markets (German Landkreise) as well as at the firm level. Wage decomposition is based on the Oaxaca Blinder method and at the district level on a reweighing approach which is capable of considering distributional statistics other than the mean. The results suggest that the gender wage gap is negatively associated with local unemployment and positively related to the unemployment rate in the commuting area. For the intra-firm gender wage gap the effect follows the same direction but is smaller and moderated by firm characteristics.
Presented by:
Stefanie Seifert, University of Tübingen
Date & time:
May 25, 2016 11:00 am - May 25, 2016 12:00 pm
Venue:
2N2.4.16
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