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Studies on wage discrimination assume that independent observers are able to distinguish a priori which workers are suffering from discrimination. However, this may not be a good assumption when anti-discrimination laws mean that severe penalties can be imposed on discriminatory employers or when unobserved heterogeneity is significant. We develop a wage discrimination model in which workers are not classified a priori. It can be thought of as a generalization of the standard empirical framework, whereas the Oaxaca–Blinder model can be thought of as an extreme case. We propose a finite mixture model to explicitly model unobserved heterogeneity in individual characteristics and estimate the probabilities of being a discriminated or a non-discriminated worker. We illustrate this proposal by estimating wage discrimination in Germany and the UK.

The purpose of this paper is to provide empirical evidence on gender wage discrimination and how it is distributed among women in the Spanish labour market, where female participation has been rising for decades. The empirical approach aims to assess to which extent discrimination is evenly distributed or not among women, and how different subgroups of workers are affected by it.

Using data from the Spanish section of the European Community Household Panel (1994-2001) the authors estimate earnings equations for men and women using the instrumental variable (IV) method proposed by Hausman and Taylor (1981). This aims to avoid biases resulting from endogeneity of regressors. Building on these results, the authors follow the proposal of Jenkins (1994) and estimate a bivariate wage distribution for women, containing individual expected earnings with and without discrimination.

The results show that discrimination is distributed unevenly across female workers and that the degree to which women are discriminated against grows as they move upward in the wage distribution. Also, when wage determinants are allowed to be endogenous, the results experience drastic changes, both in average and distributional terms.

The results point to a “glass ceiling” operating on female earnings and also show that endogeneity of human capital should be taken into account when analysing discrimination. Therefore, more empirical evidence in this line would be welcome.

By using IV estimation of wages, the authors control for the existence of endogeneity in earnings equations. Also, the authors provide unexplained wage differentials for particular groups of female wage earners, specially according to education, experience and job tenure.

This paper analyzes the issue of wage differentials and gender discrimination in the Brazilian labor market.

The methodology is based on the log-linear equation model by Mincer (1974) and the decomposition method by Oaxaca (1973) and Blinder (1973) and was estimated using data from the National Household Sample Survey (PNAD).

The main results indicate that there was a reduction in wage differentials and gender discrimination in the majority of regions in Brazil for white workers when comparing the available years. However, for non-white workers, the degree of discrimination increased in Brazil, especially in the central-west and southeast regions. Overall, wage decompositions have suggested that women suffer from wage discrimination.

This is the first paper detailing wage discrimination across the different Brazilian regions and also controlling for usual dimensions like gender and race.

The peer review history for this article is available at: https://publons.com/publon/10.1108/IJSE-09-2021-0569.

In this paper the aim is to focus on the individual distribution of gender wage discrimination in Spain and Italy, relying upon the development of Jenkins' distributional approach proposed in Del Rio et al.

The authors estimate the degree of individual discrimination for each employed woman and, relying on the decomposability properties of these estimates, assess the nature and extent of discrimination across various socio‐economic groupings.

Some mechanisms inhibit the access of highly educated women to highly rewarding occupations in Italy, especially in the public sector, but not in Spain.

The treatment of occupation and sector of activity has some impact on the results, shedding doubt on the robustness of some previous analyses of discrimination in these countries.

While no doubt the appraisal of the glass ceiling in the Italian labour market will gain extensively from further research, some prima facie evidence is found highlighting the role of appointment and promotion procedures.

A remarkable institutional divide characterises Spain and Italy in the domain of gender wage discrimination. Powerful political pressure along the lines of gender quotas for public employment has long been in place in Spain, while nothing of the kind has existed in Italy.

Economic pluralism proposes that economists and social planners should consider alternative theories to establish a range of policy actions. Neoclassical, Feminist and Marxian theories evaluate well-grounded causes of wage discrimination. However, a reluctance to consider less-dominant theories among different schools of economic thought restricts analysis and proposed policies, resulting in a monism method. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

The authors provide a brief review of the theoretical literature on wage discrimination. The significance of a pluralistic analysis is demonstrated by addressing correspondence test patterns of wage discrimination.

In considering Neoclassical, Feminist and Marxian theories, racist attitudes, uncertainties regarding minority workers’ productivity and power relations in lower-status sectors might generate discriminatory wages. Each cause deserves corresponding policy action.

Time is needed to provide a pluralistic evaluation of wage discrimination. In addition, pluralism requires rigorous investigations to avoid incoherencies. Pluralism might be jeopardised if there is a limited desire to engage with less-dominant theoretical frameworks. Also, pluralism might be misled with rejection of dominant theories.

Given pluralism, wage discrimination might be reduced by implementing equality campaigns, creating low-cost tests to predict workers’ productivity and abolishing power relations towards minority workers.

Little work has been on economic pluralism in the study of wage discrimination. The current study addresses the gap in the literature.

The Blinder Oaxaca decomposition method for defining wage differentials (generally referred to as discrimination) from the wage equations of two groups has had a wide degree of application. However, the decomposition measures can very dramatically depending on the definition of the non-discriminatory wage chosen for comparison. This paper uses a form of extreme bounds analysis to define the limits on the measure of discrimination that can be obtained from these decompositions. A simple application is presented to demonstrate the use of the bootstrap to define the distributions of the discrimination measure.

The purpose of this paper is to analyze the gender earnings gap in China with a focus on the role of differences in the occupational distribution of males and females.

The authors use a procedure to model occupational attainments and decompose differences in earnings into an inter-occupational portion due to differences in the occupational distribution between males and females, and an intra-occupational portion due to differences in pay. The analysis is based on Chinese census data.

The authors find that the male-female pay gap is virtually completely explained by wage discrimination defined as females being paid less than males within the occupation groups based on six broad occupations. Occupational segregation explains virtually none of the overall male-female pay gap, and in fact the “segregation” slightly favors women. However, the picture changes substantially when the analysis is conducted at the more disaggregate sub-occupation level within each of the six broad groups. Wage discrimination remains the prominent contributor to the pay gap across the disaggregated sub-occupations in each of the broad occupations. But there is considerable heterogeneity in the effect of occupational discrimination within the sub-occupations within the different broad occupational groups.

When females have the same occupation-determining characteristics as men, they are in lower paying sub-occupations within the professional group and to a lesser extent within manufacturing and operations jobs. There is considerable heterogeneity in the effect of occupational discrimination within the sub-occupations in the different broad occupational groups.

The paper systematically examines the degree to which the gender earnings gap in China is due to the differences in occupational distributions of males and females, highlighting that the conventional Blinder-Oaxaca decompositions can under- or over- estimate the unexplained portion of the gender pay gap by controlling or not controlling for differences in the occupational distribution of males and females. The paper also shows that previous studies that have examined occupational segregation across aggregate occupational groups can mask important differences in the effect of occupational discrimination within the sub-occupations in the different broad occupational groups.

Several studies find that there is little sex gap in wages at labor market entry, and that the sex gap in wages emerges (and grows) with time in the labor market. This evidence is consistent with (i) there is little or no sex discrimination in wages at labor market entry, and (ii) the emergence of the sex gap in wages with time in the labor market reflects differences between women and men in human capital investment (and other decisions), with women investing less early in their careers. Indeed, some economists explicitly interpret the evidence this way. We show that this interpretation ignores two fundamental implications of the human capital model, and that differences in investment can complicate the interpretation of both the starting sex gap in wages (or absence of a gap), and the differences in “returns” to experience. We then estimate stylized structural models of human capital investment and wage growth to identify the effects of discrimination (or other sources of a starting pay gap) and differences in human capital investment.

Only few studies have examined gender wage differentials and the extent of gender discrimination in South Africa. The following analysis covers several years after the end of Apartheid to describe the development of gender wage differentials and discrimination over time. Furthermore, it is also taken into account that labour force participants may have different probabilities of finding employment. By estimating selectivity corrected wage regressions it is not only possible to decompose wage gaps into the well‐known endowment and discrimination components but also detect the so‐called indirect effects that already arise at the selection into employment stage. Results obtained from this approach can drastically change the impression of wage discrimination gained from standard decomposition techniques. African women were found to increasingly suffer from discrimination at the hiring stage, whereas White women are more affected by direct wage discrimination.

Only data from developed countries were used to estimate the sexual orientation difference in wages. This paper is the first, which aims to identify the wage discrimination of gay men in Russia – a country where institutional discrimination and ignorance against gay men are known to present.

Gays are identified as men who reported having sex with other men in several waves of the national household survey. A wage equation is used to estimate the gay wage penalty. Extending the wage equation to implement a difference-in-difference design, the paper also evaluates the effect of the gay-propaganda law of 2013 on gay wages.

No wage discrimination is identified. The law also has no adverse effect on gay wages.

Cross-country comparison and theoretical generalizations are premature, and better identification strategies are needed to understand sexual orientation differences.

Policymakers should be aware that in both discriminatory and equitable environments, there may be hidden inequality even if researchers do not detect it.

The findings are implausible and add to existing evidence that gay discrimination measured with wage equation suffers from endogeneity and should be interpreted with caution. Particular caution should be exercised in cross-sectional and time-series comparisons, as a tendency to report the orientation honestly and unobserved confounders vary by location and time.