Scandinavian Working Papers in Economics

Working Paper Series,
Research Institute of Industrial Economics

No 1169: Gender Wage Gap at the Top, Job Inflexibility and Product Market Competition

Fredrik Heyman (), Pehr-Johan Norbäck () and Lars Persson ()
Additional contact information
Fredrik Heyman: Research Institute of Industrial Economics (IFN)
Pehr-Johan Norbäck: Research Institute of Industrial Economics (IFN)
Lars Persson: Research Institute of Industrial Economics (IFN)

Abstract: Research show that women are disadvantaged in inflexible occupations. We show that this will imply that female managers are on average more skilled than male managers. Due to the higher hurdles faced by women, only the most skilled among them will pursue a management career. This implies that female managers will, on average, be more beneficial for the firm when product market competition is intense. Using detailed matched employee-employer data, we find that (i) more intense product market competition leads to relatively higher wages for female managers and (ii) the share of female managers is higher in firms in more competitive industries.

Keywords: Career; Gender wage-gap; Job inflexibility; Management; Competition

JEL-codes: J70; L20; M50

50 pages, First version: May 15, 2017. Revised: July 12, 2018.

Full text files 

wp1169.pdf PDF-file

Download statistics

Questions (including download problems) about the papers in this series should be directed to Elisabeth Gustafsson ()
Report other problems with accessing this service to Sune Karlsson ().

This page generated on 2018-08-22 15:57:10.