Gender Differences in Worker Response to the Minimum Wage
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Series
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Speaker(s)Erika Deserranno (Bocconi University, Italy)
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FieldEmpirical Microeconomics
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LocationTinbergen Institute Amsterdam, room 1.61 (Moscow)
Amsterdam -
Date and time
October 03, 2023
15:30 - 16:30
Abstract
We study workers who are employed by a large US retailer, work in many store
locations, and are paid based on performance. By means of a border-discontinuity
analysis, we document that, compared to male workers in similar working conditions,
female workers exert more effort and are terminated less often in response to a minimum wage increase. Based on an efficiency wage model, we compute an index of
the welfare gain due to the minimum wage which, in our calibration, suggests that
female workers benefit less than similarly-situated males from the minimum wage.
Consistent with an efficiency wage model, these gender differentials arise in times
and locations where the outside option (market wage) is much higher for men than
women. Joint paper with Decio Coviello and Nicola Persico.