How to Limit Discrimination? Analyzing the Effects of Innovative Workplace Practices on Intra-Firm Gender Wage Gaps Using Linked Employer-Employee Data

This paper provides a new approach to assess the impact of organisational changes fostering employee involvement, performance related pay schemes and other relevant trends in personnel policy on the gender wage gap. Our results indicate that innovative human resource practices tend to limit the wage differential between men and women. The innovation of this study is that we use linked employer-employee data to look at within-firm gender wage differentials. To investigate the theoretical hypotheses regarding the effect of selected human resource measures on gender wage inequality, we calculate a firm-specific gender wage gap accounting for differences in individual characteristics.

Wolf, Elke and Anja Heinze (2007), How to Limit Discrimination? Analyzing the Effects of Innovative Workplace Practices on Intra-Firm Gender Wage Gaps Using Linked Employer-Employee Data, ZEW Discussion Paper No. 07-077, Mannheim.