Pay Transparency and the Gender Gap
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 the laws reduced the gender pay gap between men and women by approximately 20-40 percent.
Published Versions
Michael Baker & Yosh Halberstam & Kory Kroft & Alexandre Mas & Derek Messacar, 2023. "Pay Transparency and the Gender Gap," American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, vol 15(2), pages 157-183. citation courtesy of