TY - JOUR AB - Purpose– The purpose of this paper is to provide empirical evidence on the gender wage differential of labor market entrants and the determinants of their starting wages. Design/methodology/approach– The paper makes use of a unique data set on graduates in economics from a large German university that contains detailed information on the graduates’ course of study, their additional qualifications and their transition from university to the labor market. Based on these data, Mincer-type earnings functions as well as wage decompositions as proposed by Blinder (1973) and Oaxaca (1973) are performed. Findings– The paper finds a significant gender wage differential of 7 percent. Blinder-Oaxaca decompositions suggest that the major part of this gap remains unexplained by gender differences in observable characteristics. Research limitations/implications– The main feature of our analysis – having a highly homogeneous sample of graduates from a single university – comes at the costs of reduced ability to draw generalized conclusions from our findings. Originality/value– This paper investigates the determinants of entry wages for a homogeneous group of high-skilled workers using a unique data set of graduates in business and economics from a large German university. Concentrating on a highly homogeneous sample limits the problem of unobserved heterogeneity, which results in an overestimation of the unexplained component of standard decompositions analyses. Hence, the finding that a large part of the gender pay gap remains unexplained can be considered as an indicator for gender discrimination in the labor market for economics graduates. VL - 35 IS - 3 SN - 0143-7720 DO - 10.1108/IJM-01-2012-0013 UR - https://doi.org/10.1108/IJM-01-2012-0013 AU - Bredtmann Julia AU - Otten Sebastian PY - 2014 Y1 - 2014/01/01 TI - Getting what (employers think) you’re worth: Evidence on the gender gap in entry wages among university graduates T2 - International Journal of Manpower PB - Emerald Group Publishing Limited SP - 291 EP - 305 Y2 - 2024/03/29 ER -