14:00 - 15:30
Parallel track
Room: Kanunnikenzaal
How Unfair Chances and Gender Discrimination Affect Labor Supply
Nickolas Gagnon, Kristof Bosmans, Arno Riedl
Department of Economics, School of Business and Economics, Maastricht University, Maastricht

We investigate the causal impact of unfair chances and gender discrimination on labor supply decisions. We conduct a large-scale experiment in which workers individually engage in the same task for a fixed piece-rate wage. We employ two payment schemes with equal wages, and three payment schemes with unequal wages generated through different procedures: (1) fair chances, (2) unfair chances based on an unspecified source, and (3) unfair chances based on gender discrimination. We find that, at a given wage, negative gender discrimination reduces the labor supply of workers substantially compared to equal wages (-22%). This effect is twice as large as the decrease induced by unequal wages from non-discriminatory fair and unfair chances (-11%). Moreover, the unfairness of non-discriminatory chances does not influence labor supply. Advantaged workers do not react to the unequal wages generated by our different procedures. Overall, our results support a novel supply-side consequence of discrimination in labor markets.


Reference:
Th-Gender-2
Session:
Gender
Presenter/s:
Nickolas Gagnon
Room:
Kanunnikenzaal
Date:
Thursday, 2 May
Time:
14:00 - 15:30
Session times:
14:00 - 15:30