Theory and Evidence on the Glass Ceiling Effect Using Matched Worker-Firm Data

34 Pages Posted: 7 Nov 2005

See all articles by Mohamed Jellal

Mohamed Jellal

affiliation not provided to SSRN

Christophe J. Nordman

Institut de Recherche pour le Developpement (IRD); IRD, DIAL, Paris

Francois-Charles Wolff

University of Nantes

Date Written: July 2005

Abstract

We investigate the glass ceiling hypothesis according to which there exist larger gender wage gaps at the upper tail of the wage distribution. We demonstrate that in some circumstances, more qualified women may be offered lower wages than men at the equilibrium. This occurs for instance in a competitive model of wage determination where employers face gender-specific probabilities concerning the stability of their employees in their firms. Then, we focus on the relevance and the magnitude of the glass ceiling effect in France using a matched worker-firm data set. We estimate quantile regressions and use a principal component analysis to summarize information specific to the firms. Our different results shows that accounting for firm-related characteristics reduces the gender earnings gap at the top of the distribution, but the latter still remains much higher at the top than at the bottom.

Keywords: Gender wage gap, Glass ceiling, Quantile regressions, Matched worker-firm data

JEL Classification: J24, J31,O12

Suggested Citation

Jellal, Mohamed and Nordman, Christophe Jalil and Nordman, Christophe Jalil and Wolff, Francois-Charles, Theory and Evidence on the Glass Ceiling Effect Using Matched Worker-Firm Data (July 2005). Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=842504 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.842504

Mohamed Jellal

affiliation not provided to SSRN

Christophe Jalil Nordman (Contact Author)

Institut de Recherche pour le Developpement (IRD)

213, rue La Fayette
75480 Paris cedex 10, 90009
France

IRD, DIAL, Paris

213, rue La Fayette
75480 Paris cedex 10, 90009
France

Francois-Charles Wolff

University of Nantes ( email )

1, quai de Tourville BP
Nantes Cedex 1
Nantes, 44313
France

Do you have negative results from your research you’d like to share?

Paper statistics

Downloads
306
Abstract Views
3,050
Rank
181,046
PlumX Metrics