Upload
vuongtuyen
View
219
Download
3
Embed Size (px)
Citation preview
Feminist economicsIntroduction and overview
Christine Zulehner
JKU Linz, Wifo
Linz, October 6, 2011
Feminist Economics: Introduction and overview 1 / 21
Feminist economics
Course description
� course in applied economics for master students� we explore feminist aspects of economic theory as well as empirical and
experimental evidence of gender differences
Topics
� household economics, women in the work force� wage differences and wage discrimination, human capital theory,� theories of discrimination, the effect of competition on discrimination� psychological and socio-psychological factors regarding gender
differences in risk preferences, in attitudes towards competition, and inattitudes towards negotiation
Feminist Economics: Introduction and overview 2 / 21
Feminist economics
Target group: Students of business and economics (Master)
Language: English
Grading: class participation (25%), presentation of a paper (25%), termpaper (25%), take home final (25%)
Regular meetings: Thursday, 10.15-11.45, K 224B
Announcements and slides are available on my webpage
Feminist Economics: Introduction and overview 3 / 21
Outline
06/10/11: first meeting
13/10/11 - 17/11/11: lectures, discussion of papers
20/10/11: no lecture
24/11/11 - 26/01/11: students’ presentations, discussion of papers
15/12/12: take home final is given out
26/01/12: deadline for take home final and term paper
Feminist Economics: Introduction and overview 4 / 21
Feminist economics
Literature
� Altonji, Joseph G. and Rebecca M. Blank (1999): Race and Gender inthe Labor Market, in: Orley Ashenfelter and David Card, Handbook ofLabor Economics, Volume 3C, North Holland, Amsterdam, p.3143-3257.
� Bertrand, Marianne (2010): New Perspectives on Gender, in: OrleyAshenfelter and David Card, Handbook of Labor Economics, Volume4B, North Holland, Amsterdam, p 1545-1592.
Feminist Economics: Introduction and overview 5 / 21
Motivation
Income and wage differences in Austria
� Women earn 41% less, fulltime employed women 22% less(Rechnungshof 2008)
Austria’s position in the EU
� Gender pay gap: 25% (incl. wage of part time workers)� Austria is 25th out of 27 countries
Differences between income and wage differences
� How are income and wages are measured?� Yearly income, hourly wages, working time per week
Feminist Economics: Introduction and overview 6 / 21
Introduction
Why do women earn less than men
� What is the effect of labor market participation?� Are there differences in wage determining characteristics between men
and women?� Is there discrimination? or, are there unobserved characteristics?
Definition of wage discrimination from an economic point of view
� different wages despite the same productive characteristics� discrimination taking place not in the labor market is ignored
What are appropriate policies?
Feminist Economics: Introduction and overview 7 / 21
Determinants of labor market participation decision
Labor supply (chapter 6 in Ehrenberg and Smith 2009)
� individual decision to work� trade-off between leisure and work� income effect and substitution effect
Household theory (chapter 7 in Ehrenberg and Smith 2009)
� decision of a household to work� trade-off between homework production and work� income effect and substitution effect� comparative advantage
Participation rates
Microsimulation
Additional literature: chapters 3 and 4 in Blau, Ferber and Winckler (2009)
Feminist Economics: Introduction and overview 8 / 21
Determinants of wages
Compensating wage differentials (chapter 8 in Ehrenberg and Smith 2006)
� Adam Smith: “the wages of labour vary with ease or hardship, thecleanliness or dirtiness, the honourableness and dishonourableness ofthe employment”
� observed wage differentials reflect in part workers’ tastes for variousamenities and disamenities.
Human capital theory
� schooling as investment (chapter 9 in Ehrenberg and Smith 2006)� dynamic framework: costs vs. benefits from schooling
Feminist Economics: Introduction and overview 9 / 21
Determinants of wages
Horizontal segregation
� occupational segregation and differences in investment into humancapital (Polachek 1981)
� reply to Polachek (England 1982)
Vertical segregation (promotion tournaments)
Feminist Economics: Introduction and overview 10 / 21
Wage differences between women and men
discrimination vs. differences in human capital (chapter 12 in Ehrenberg andSmith 2006, Winter-Ebmer and Zweimuller 1994, Boheim et al. 2007,Grunberger and Zulehner 2009, Boheim et al. 2011a, Boheim et al. 2011b)
∗∗ preferences and investment into human capital (Goldin and Katz 2002)
∗∗ occupational segregation (Groshen 1990, Bayard et al. 2003)
top corporate jobs (Bertrand and Hallock 2001, Yurtoglu und Zulehner,2006)
∗∗ career interruptions and working time (Bertrand, Goldin and Katz 2009)
Feminist Economics: Introduction and overview 11 / 21
International comparisons
∗∗ comparison across Europe (Arulampalam, Booth, and Bryan 2007,Ponthieux and Meurs 2005)
∗∗ global gender report
further country differences (Blau 1998, Blau and Kahn 1992, 1996, 2003)
metaanalysis (Weichselbaumer and Winter Ebmer 2005, 2007)
∗∗ effect of participation (Olivetti and Petrongolo 2008)
Feminist Economics: Introduction and overview 12 / 21
Econometric methods (Berndt 1991, Wooldridge 2003)
estimation of wage functions: OLS, Heckman procedure
decomposition techniques
quantile regressions
Feminist Economics: Introduction and overview 13 / 21
Results for Austria
Determinants of labor market participation
� traditional society, women take care of children� few child care facilities for 0-3 year olds → high female part time rate
Wage differences in 2007 (full time employed)
� 18,1% → 11,0% (private and public sector)� 23,4% → 12,6% (private sector)
Determinants
� education, experience, horizontal and vertical segregation� discrimination vs. differences in unobserved characteristics
Feminist Economics: Introduction and overview 14 / 21
Discrimination and affirmative action
Employer discrimination, i.e. taste for discrimination (Becker 1957)
� source of discrimination is personal prejudice� discriminatory employers maximize utility, not profits� less than the optimal number of women are employed� competitive mechanisms should ensure that discriminators are replaced
by less prejudiced firms
Statistical discrimination (Aigner and Cain 1986)
Feminist Economics: Introduction and overview 15 / 21
Empirical Evidence
Direct evidence of discrimination
� ∗ audit study (Bertrand and Mullainathan 2003)� ∗ admission to orchestras (Goldin und Rouse 2000)
Empirical tests of Becker’s model
� ∗ government regulation (Ashenfelter and Hannan 1986, Black andStrahan 2001)
� ∗ international competition (Black and Brainerd 2004, Weichselbaumerand Winter-Ebmer 2007)
� ∗ correlation between female employment and profitability among firms(Hellerstein et al. 2002, Kawaguchi 2007)
� firm selection (Weber and Zulehner 2009, 2011)
∗ test for statistical discrimination (Altonji and Pierret 1997)
Feminist Economics: Introduction and overview 16 / 21
Differences in unobserved characteristics
∗ preferences, risk aversion (Dohmen et al. 2010, DeLeire and Levy 2004)
∗ wage negotiations (Riley, Babcock and McGinn 2005)
∗ behavior in competition → women in top positions (Niederle andVesterlund 2007, Gneezy, Niederle and Rustichini 2003, Lavy 2008)
∗ nature vs. nurture (Gneezy et al. 2008, Booth and Nolen 2009a,b)
∗ effect of psychological factors in explaining the gender gap (Manning andSwaffield 2008)
Feminist Economics: Introduction and overview 17 / 21
Policies to reduce discrimination
∗ statistical discrimination and affirmative action (Lundberg and Startz1983)
∗ competition and affirmative action (Balafoutas and Sutter 2010)
Feminist Economics: Introduction and overview 18 / 21
Plan of the course
06/10/11: Introduction and overview
13/10/11: Labor supply and household theory
20/10/11: no lecture
27/10/11: Wage determinants
03/11/11: Empirical evidence for wage differences between women and men
10/11/11: International comparison
17/11/11: Theories of discrimination
24/11/11: Direct evidence of discrimination
01/12/11: Empirical evidence of discrimination
15/12/11: Differences in preferences (risk aversion), wage negotiations
12/01/12: Behavior in competition
19/01/12: Nature vs. nurture
26/01/12: Policies to reduce discrimination, Take home final is due
Feminist Economics: Introduction and overview 19 / 21
Students’ presentations
24/11/11: Direct evidence of discrimination
� audit study (Bertrand and Mullainathan 2003)� admission to orchestras (Goldin und Rouse 2000)
01/12/11: Empirical evidence of discrimination
� government regulation (Black and Strahan 2001)� international competition (Black and Brainerd 2004)� correlation between female employment and profitability among firms
(Hellerstein et al. 2002)
15/12/11: differences in preferences (risk aversion), wage negotiations
� risk aversion (Dohmen et al. 2010, DeLeire and Levy 2004)� wage negotiations (Riley, Babcock and McGinn 2005)
Feminist Economics: Introduction and overview 20 / 21
Students’ presentations
12/01/12: behavior in competition
� selection into competition (Niederle and Vesterlund 2007)� behavior in competitions (Gneezy, Niederle and Rustichini 2003)� empirical evidence (Lavy 2008)
19/01/12: nature vs. nurture
� patriarchy vs. matriarchy (Gneezy et al. 2008)� role of eduction (Booth and Nolen 2009a,b)
26/01/12: effect of psychological factors in explaining the gender gap, policies to
reduce discrimination, take home final is due
� effect of psychological factors (Manning and Swaffield 2008)� statistical discrimination and affirmative action (Lundberg and Startz
1983)� competition and affirmative action (Balafoutas and Sutter 2010)
Feminist Economics: Introduction and overview 21 / 21