Giovanni Razzu

Gender and the Business Cycle: A Stocks and Flows Analysis of US and UK Labour Market States

In this paper we combine an analysis of all labour market stocks and flows to assess gender gaps during periods of economic recessions and booms in oth the US and the UK. Starting from an improved understanding of the relationship between gender and the business cycle, we analyse three important and related gender issues: how the fluidity of the labour market explains the way gender gaps in population rates behave during economic cycles, whether the well-known stock-flow fallacy in the importance of cyclical differences in participation extends to gender patterns, and the potential presence of the added worker effect at the aggregate level during the latest Great Recession. We find that, for the UK in particular, flows reveal more prevalent gender differences in participation over the cycle than an analysis of stocks would imply. This is consistent with a female specific added worker effect in the UK, which is not present in the US.

Who works for whom and the UK gender pay gap

This study reports novel facts about the UK gender pay gap. We use a large, longitudinal, representative and employer employee linked dataset for the years 2002-16. Men’s average log hourly wage was 22 points higher than women’s in this period. We ask how much of this gap is accounted for by the differences in whom men and women worked for; how much is explained by the relative wage premiums that firms paid their employees, after adjusting for the influence of other factors, such as occupations and tenure? The answer is less than 1 percentage point, or about one eighteenth of the adjusted hourly gender pay gap. We also find that the allocation of men and women to occupations was as unimportant as how workers were allocated to firms. These results show that in the United Kingdom what happens within firms and occupations is far more important than what jobs men and women have. Therefore, attention should focus on why men and women within UK firms tend to receive different rates of pay.

Segregation and Gender Gaps in the United Kingdom's Great Recession and Recovery

ABSTRACT This article assesses the role of segregation in explaining gender employment gaps through the United Kingdom’s Great Recession and its subsequent period of recovery and fiscal austerity. The analysis reaffirms that gender employment gaps in the UK respond to the business cycle, and it evaluates to what extent these short-term changes in the employment gap can be explained by the industry sectors and occupations where women and men work. A counterfactual analysis accounts for the specific role of combined gender segregation across industry sectors and occupations that existed at the onset of the Great Recession. The results contradict the existing narrative that men’s employment was more harshly affected than women’s employment; segregation accounts for over two and a half times the actual fall in the gender gap between 2007 and 2011.

Segregation and Gender Gaps through the UK's Great Recession

This article assesses the role of segregation in explaining gender employment gaps through the United Kingdom’s Great Recession and its subsequent period of recovery and fiscal austerity. The analysis reaffirms that gender employment gaps in the UK respond to the business cycle, and it evaluates to what extent these short-term changes in the employment gap can be explained by the industry sectors and occupations where women and men work. A counterfactual analysis accounts for the specific role of combined gender segregation across industry sectors and occupations that existed at the onset of the Great Recession. The results contradict the existing narrative that men’s employment was more harshly affected than women’s employment; segregation accounts for over two and a half times the actual fall in the gender gap between 2007 and 2011.