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Most social scientists believe that schools serving the disadvantaged provide considerably poorer learning environments than schools serving advantaged students. As a result, schools are thought to be an important source of social problems like inequality. However, an important subset of research employing seasonal comparisons (observing how achievement gaps change when school is in versus out) disputes this position. These studies note that socioeconomic-based gaps in skills grow faster when school is out versus in, suggesting that achievement gaps would be larger if not for schools. I discuss the advantages of seasonal comparison studies and how they provide a more contextual perspective for understanding several important questions, such as: (1) What is the distribution of school quality? (2) How does inequality outside of school condition the way schools matter? and (3) Which policies, school or non-school, most effectively reduce achievement gaps? I conclude that our understanding of how schools influence inequality would be improved by employing the more contextual perspective offered by seasonal comparisons. Seasonal comparison studies have not played a meaningful role in public discussions and so the public lacks a proper understanding of the extent to which social context shapes achievement gaps. This is unfortunate because we continue to try and address achievement gaps primarily through school reform when the real source of the problem lies in the inequalities outside of schools.

This study investigated the gender wage gap in Nigeria by analysing two waves of household surveys (in 2003–2004 and 2018–2019) in order to understand the dynamics or polarisation of the labour market in Nigeria in terms of the gender wage gap over time.

The study applied an extension of Oaxaca–Blinder decomposition that relies on the re-centred influence function (RIF) regressions to analyse the gender wage gap at all points along the wage distribution.

The results unambiguously show that there is a significant gender wage gap in Nigeria at all points along the wage distribution, such that for the two surveys used and after nearly two decades, men still earn more than women. That is, the log wage difference between males and females is statistically significant at all points between the 10th and the 90th quantiles. In 2003–2004 period, the authors found that most of the wage difference was significantly accounted for by the wage structure effect, whilst the composition effect was negative and only significant at the bottom of the wage distribution. Since the 2018–2019 period, the authors found that there has been a visible change such that most of the gender wage gap is now accounted for by the composition effect at all points along the wage distribution. Another interesting finding is that there has been a general decline in the gender wage gap along the entire wage distribution, such that inequality was higher in 2003–2004 than in 2018–2019. This decline is bigger at the top than at the bottom of the wage distribution. The authors also found that, contrary to some of the studies on the wage gap, the raw gaps for the two surveys appear to show inverted U-shape, but the gap has fallen quickly since the 2018–2019 period. Thus, the authors found strong evidence of a “sticky floor” compared to a “glass ceiling” effect in both periods, and this becomes more pronounced over time. In terms of the contributions of individual covariates on gender pay gap in Nigeria, the authors found that urban residence, unionisation, education and occupation variables exhibit major influence. However, the effects of covariates on the composition and wage structure components of the wage gap have changed over time.

The major policy implication of these findings is that to address the gender wage gap in Nigeria, policy should focus more on how labour is rewarded and improving human capital for women.

This study is a novel paper in Nigeria that has investigated the gender wage gap in Nigeria by extending the focus of literature in three ways. First, the authors applied an extension of Oaxaca–Blinder decomposition that relies on the RIF regressions to analyse the gender wage gap at all points along the wage distribution. Second, the authors used sample selection bias to account for the non-randomness of participation in wage employment. And third, the authors applied similar analysis to two waves of household surveys (in 2003/2004 and 2018/2019) in order to understand the dynamics or polarisation of the labour market in Nigeria in terms of the gender wage gap over time.

Results from international large-scale assessments, such as PISA surveys, suggest that boys do better in math and science, whereas girls do better in reading. How do gender gaps vary across subjects, when estimated simultaneously? Building on the work of Tsai, Smith, and Hauser (2017), we answer this question by applying a multilevel-MIMIC model that enables us to estimate gender gaps in two ways: gender differences in the effects of observed family and school factors on math, science, and reading scores; and the “adjusted” gender gaps in test scores across all three subjects after controlling for observables. We apply the model to 2012 PISA data of students aged 15–16 and enrolled in 9th or 10th grade in three East Asian (Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan) and three Western countries (USA, Germany, and the Czech Republic) that represent both similar and different types of school systems. Our findings indicate that the gender gap in math or science achievement in Western countries, favoring boys, does not necessarily apply to the East Asian countries examined here, while all three East Asian countries exhibit similar features of gender reading gaps in the 10th grade. There is evidence indicating that observed background and school factors impact boys’ and girls’ achievement in a similar way in USA, Japan, Korea, Taiwan, and the Czech Republic, but not in Germany. Overall, gender differences in family and school influences do not account for gender differences in academic achievement in any of the six countries.

Using a unique data set from the National Association of Colleges and Employers (NACE), we estimate the gender starting-salary gap for college graduates from 2000 to 2010. Simulation techniques are used to estimate how the salary gap would change if women had selected the same majors or job types as men. We find that about 90% of the starting-salary gap is explainable by gender differences in majors and types of job offers – a higher percentage than found in most other studies. Duncan indexes of dissimilarity also indicate that the gender distributions of job offers by college major and type of first jobs have not become more similar over the past 10 years. Although differences in college major and types of first jobs explain most of the gender gap in starting salaries of college graduates, small but unexplained gender pay differences reveal themselves in the NACE statistics.

We examine the potential effect of naturalization on the U.S. immigrants’ earnings. We find the earning gap between naturalized citizens and noncitizens is positive over many years, with a tent shape across the wage distribution. We focus on a normalized metric entropy measure of the gap between distributions, and compare with conventional measures at the mean, median, and other quantiles. In addition, naturalized citizen earnings (at least) second-order stochastically dominate noncitizen earnings in many of the recent years. We construct two counterfactual distributions to further examine the potential sources of the earning gap, the “wage structure” effect and the “composition” effect. Both of these sources contribute to the gap, but the composition effect, while diminishing somewhat after 2005, accounts for about 3/4 of the gap. The unconditional quantile regression (based on the Recentered Influence Function), and conditional quantile regressions confirm that naturalized citizens have generally higher wages, although the gap varies for different income groups, and has a tent shape in many years.

In this paper, we update and extend “Is There a Glass Ceiling in Sweden?” (Albrecht, Björklund, & Vroman, 2003) by documenting the extent to which the gender log wage gap across the distribution in Sweden has changed over the period 1998–2008. We then examine the Swedish glass ceiling in 2008 in more detail by documenting how it differs for white-collar versus blue-collar workers and for private- versus public-sector workers. We also examine when in the life cycle the glass ceiling effect arises and how this effect develops around the birth of the first child. Finally, we investigate the possible connection between the glass ceiling and the parental leave system in Sweden by linking wage data with data on parental leave from different Swedish registers.

This paper discusses a number of issues affecting mergers and acquisitions (M&A) from the perspective of competence-based management. A new framework for competence gap analysis is developed which can be used to assess important aspects of M&A decisions. The usefulness of M&A is compared with other gap-closing actions. This model is founded in the systems view of the firm as developed by Sanchez and Heene (1996), where strategic gaps perceived by managers motivate actions to change the resource and competence base of a firm. In the analysis process derived from this model, several resource states must be identified and analyzed, especially those critical to competences that are needed to achieve sustained competitive advantages in targeted future markets. This approach to strategic gap analysis is also helpful in evaluating alternative gap-closing actions. In this context, M&A are shown to be particularly appropriate actions to fill numerous and large competence gaps especially with a high degree of interaction between involved resources.