J71 - Labor DiscriminationReturn

Psychological traits have received significant attention in labour market research in recent decades. Unfortunately, empirical evidence remains limited for some psychological traits and their interactions. To address this gap, we conduct a representative survey of employees, assessing competitiveness, persistence, and risk tolerance using single-item scales. This comprehensive study sheds light on the connection between these traits and wages. Our results confirm that individuals possessing these traits tend to earn higher wages, even when we account for indirect factors, such as higher educational attainment and better job positions. It also suggests that competitiveness and risk tolerance are particularly valuable for individuals with middle and high incomes, while persistence is valuable for those with low and middle incomes. These findings support the systematic development of competitiveness, persistence, and risk tolerance through education and sporting activities.

We analyse the extent and determinants of somewhat gloomy employment prospects of older unemployed populations in Austria, the Czech Republic, Poland and Slovakia. For this purpose, we explore the European Union Statistics on Income and Living Conditions over the period 2004-2014. Survival estimates suggest that older unemployed workers face lower job-finding probabilities compared to prime-age unemployed workers, while this age-based gap increases with longer unemployment spells. The results of estimating the hazard models reveal that the job-finding probability of older unemployed workers is about 20-25% lower than that of the prime-age group, even after controlling for explanatory covariates and unobserved heterogeneity. Unemployment duration appears to be the major determinant of job-finding probability within both age groups. In contrast, the impact of explanatory covariates (gender, education, household characteristics, etc.) is relatively less robust and/or uniform.

Using data from European Union Statistics on Income and Living Conditions, the study examines the causes of variation in the unexplained gender pay gap among 25 European countries and considers the effect of the legal environment on these. We employ the Oaxaca-Blinder decomposition to estimate the unexplained part of the gender pay gap. To assess the impact of the rule of law on unexplained gender wage differences, we apply a linear regression model, where the estimated unexplained gender pay gap is used as a dependent variable and selected rule of law indicators (specifically the Worldwide Governance Indicators Rule of Law and the Legal System & Property Rights Index) as explanatory variables. Controlling for other institutions affecting gender wage differences (specifically labour market regulation, work-family reconciliation policy and male wage dispersion), we suggest that differences in the quality of legislation and law enforcement across European countries may partly account for the variation in the unexplained gender pay gap. A very progressive improvement in rule of law indices (from the worst to the best among the 25 European countries examined) leads to a decrease in the unexplained gender pay gap by 4.5-5 percentage points.

The paper is devoted to gender wage differences; it especially focuses on the impact of the gender characteristics of the manager on gender wage disparity. Under the social identity theory, women in managerial positions, that can affect the wage of their subordinates, are likely to evaluate female employees better than male employees. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the effect of the gender characteristics of middle managers on the wages of directly subordinated rank-and-file employees using a variation within the firm. We have used two methods to consider the effect of the manager gender characteristics on subordinates: the estimation of the wage function and the average treatment effect on the treated, both supplemented by a matching procedure. We concluded that women in middle management in comparison to their male counterparts have a lower tendency to apply wage discrimination against women. The presence of a female head of department led to a decrease in the gender pay gap by almost 7 percentage points.