"Market Returns to Personality: A Job Search Approach to Understanding Gender Gaps" (appears in JPE)
This paper examines the effects of the Big Five personality traits on labor market outcomes and gender wage gaps using a job search and bargaining model with parameters that vary at the individual level. The analysis, based on German panel data, reveals that both cognitive and noncognitive traits significantly influence wages and employment outcomes. Higher conscientiousness and emotional stability and lower agreeableness levels enhance earnings and job stability for both genders. Differences in the distributions of personality characteristics between men and women account for as much of the gender wage gap as do the large differences in labor market experience.
Eliminating gender differences in work experience would reduce the wage gap by 19.8%. Equalizing average personality traits would reduce the wage gap by 19.2%. Detailed investigation of different traits shows that agreeableness and emotional stability contribute the most to the gender wage gap. In particular, women’s higher average levels of agreeableness and lower average levels of emotional stability relative to men result in 19.2% of the wage gap. Women's higher agreeableness and lower emotional stability substantially reduce,
No comments:
Post a Comment