Working Paper: CEPR ID: DP15552
Authors: Wolfgang Keller; Teresa Molina; Will Olney
Abstract: This paper examines gender differences among top business executives using a large executive-employermatched data set spanning the last quarter century. Female executives make up 6.2% of the sample and wefind they exhibit more labor market churning – both higher entry and higher exit rates. Unconditionally,women earn 26% less than men, which decreases to 7.9% once executive characteristics, firm characteristics,and in particular job title are accounted for. The paper explores the extent to which firm-level temporalflexibility and corporate culture can explain these gender differences. Although we find that women tendto select into firms with temporal flexibility and a female-friendly corporate culture, there is no evidencethat this sorting drives the gender pay gap. However, we do find evidence that corporate culture affectspay gaps within firms: the within-firm gender pay gap disappears entirely at female-friendly firms. Overall,while both corporate culture and flexibility affect the female share of employment, only corporate cultureinfluences the gender pay gap.
Keywords: women; executive compensation; gender pay gap; corporate culture
JEL Codes: J16; J24; J33; F16
Edges that are evidenced by causal inference methods are in orange, and the rest are in light blue.
| Cause | Effect |
|---|---|
| corporate culture (M14) | within-firm pay gaps (J31) |
| female-friendly corporate culture (M14) | gender pay gap (J31) |
| temporal flexibility (C41) | representation of female executives (J16) |
| female executives (M12) | labor market churning (J63) |
| gender pay gap (J31) | female executives (M12) |
| corporate culture (M14) | gender pay gap (J31) |
| female-friendly corporate culture (M14) | conditional gender pay gap (J79) |
| female executives (M12) | sorting into firms with characteristics (L20) |