Salary History Bans and Gender Discrimination

Meli, Jeffrey; Spindler, James C.

doi:10.2139/ssrn.3361431

Cited by 7 publications

(3 citation statements)

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“…A nascent literature directly studies salary history bans introduced in the past decade. The theoretical predictions about the effects of salary history bans are nuanced and ambiguous (Cullen and Pakzad-Hurson, 2021;Meli and Spindler, 2019). A series of empirical papers study salary history bans using panel methods and a variety of observational data sets (Bessen et al, 2020;Davis et al, 2020;Hansen and McNichols, 2020;Mask, 2020;Sinha, 2019;Sran et al, 2020).…”

Section: Salary History Bansmentioning

confidence: 99%

Salary History and Employer Demand: Evidence from a Two-Sided Audit

2021

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Section: Salary History Bansmentioning

confidence: 99%

Salary History and Employer Demand: Evidence from a Two-Sided Audit

2021

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“…A nascent literature directly studies these bans. The theoretical predictions about the effects of salary history bans are nuanced and ambiguous (Cullen and Pakzad-Hurson, 2021;Meli and Spindler, 2019). A series of empirical papers study salary history bans using panel methods and a variety of observational data sets (Bessen et al, 2020;Davis et al, 2020;Hansen and McNichols, 2020;.…”

Section: Related Literaturementioning

confidence: 99%

Salary History and Employer Demand: Evidence from a Two-Sided Audit

2021

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“…A second mechanism is adverse selection or statistical discrimination. Meli and Spindler (2019) contend that without salary histories, employers will base wages on average productivity (see also Greenwald 1986;Sran, Vetter, and Walsh 2020). For example, wage offers for female workers will be based on the average productivity of women.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Perpetuating Wage Inequality: Evidence from Salary History Bans

Bessen

Denk

Chen

2023

Preprint

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Pay gaps for women and minorities have persisted after accounting for observable differences. Why? If employers can access applicants’ salary histories while bargaining over wages, they can take advantage of past inequities, perpetuating inequality. Recently, a dozen US states have banned employer access to salary histories. We analyze the effects of these salary history bans (SHBs) on private employer wage posting and pay. We develop a theoretical model of firms’ choices between posting wages and bargaining, drawing out the implications of SHBs on wages for different groups of jobs. We then implement a comprehensive causal analysis in a difference-in-differences design. The results show that following SHBs, private employers posted wages more often and increased pay for job changers, particularly for women (6.2%) and non-whites (5.8%). There is also no evidence of adverse selection of workers overall or adverse employer reactions in the short run. Bargaining behavior and the use of salary histories appear to account for much of the persistence of residual wage gaps.

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Salary History Bans and Gender Discrimination

Cited by 7 publications

References 0 publications

Salary History and Employer Demand: Evidence from a Two-Sided Audit

Salary History and Employer Demand: Evidence from a Two-Sided Audit

Salary History and Employer Demand: Evidence from a Two-Sided Audit

Perpetuating Wage Inequality: Evidence from Salary History Bans

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