Do women benefit from competitive markets? Product market competition and the gender pay gap in Germany

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Using a large linked employer-employee dataset for Germany with a direct plant-level measure of product market competition and controlling for job-cell fixed effects, we investigate whether relative wages of women benefit from strong competition. We find that the unexplained gender pay gap is about 2.4 log points lower in West German plants that face strong product market competition than in those experiencing weak competition, whereas no such link shows up for East Germany.
Original languageEnglish
JournalEconomics Bulletin
Volume32
Issue number2
Pages (from-to)1618-1624
Number of pages7
ISSN1545-2921
Publication statusPublished - 01.05.2012
Externally publishedYes