Explaining personality pay gaps in the UK

Publication type

Conference Paper

Series

Econometric Society World Congress 2010

Authors

Publication date

August 18, 2010

Abstract:

Using the British Household Panel Survey we examine how the Big Five personality traits - openness to experience, conscientiousness, extroversion, agreeableness, and neuroticism - affect wages. We estimate mean and quantile pay gaps between people with low and high levels of each of the Big Five, and decompose these pay gaps in the part explained by differences in workers' characteristics and in the residual unexplained part. We find that openness to experience is the most relevant personality trait followed by neuroticism, agreeableness and extroversion. Openness and extroversion are rewarded while agreeableness and neuroticism are penalized.

#517437

---

Related Publications

• Explaining personality pay gaps in the UK

  1. Alita Nandi
  2. Cheti Nicoletti

  ISER Working Paper Series
  July 1, 2009

• Explaining personality pay gaps in the UK

  1. Alita Nandi
  2. Cheti Nicoletti

  Conference Paper
  June 11, 2009

• Explaining personality pay gaps in Britain

  1. Cheti Nicoletti
  2. Alita Nandi

  Conference Paper
  June 1, 2009