Michael Baker

First name
Michael
Last name
Baker
Abstract

We examine the impact of public sector salary disclosure laws on university faculty salaries in Canada. The laws, which enable public access to the salaries of individual faculty if they exceed specified thresholds, were introduced in different provinces at different times. Using detailed administrative data covering the majority of faculty in Canada, and an event-study research design that exploits within-province variation in exposure to the policy across institutions and academic departments, we find robust evidence that that the laws reduced the gender pay gap between men and women by approximately 30 percent. There is suggestive evidence that higher female salaries contributed to the narrowing of the gender gap. The reduction in the gender gap is
primarily in universities where faculty are unionized.

Year of Publication
2019
Number
630
Date Published
11/2019
Publication Language
eng
Citation Key
11451
Mas, A., Baker, M., Halberstam, Y., Kroft, K., & Messacar, D. (2019). Pay Transparency and The Gender Gap. Retrieved from http://arks.princeton.edu/ark:/88435/dsp01s1784p60g (Original work published November 2019)
Working Papers