Mette Verner

Why are So Few Females Promoted into CEO and Vice-President Positions? Danish Empirical Evidence 1997-2007

The authors estimate the probability of promotion into VP and CEO positions using employer-employee data from all Danish companies observed during the period 1997 to 2007. After controlling for a large number of firm and family-related variables, including take-up history of maternity and paternity leave and proxies for female-friendly companies, a considerable gap still occurs in the promotion probabilities for CEO positions. Part of the gap is due to gender differences in the area of specialization as top executive. Women tend to cluster in VP positions in HR, R&D, and IT areas in which the chances of a CEO promotion are lower than for positions as CFOs and VPs in Sales or Production areas.

At the Lower End of the Table: Determinants of Poverty among Immigrants to Denmark and Sweden

In this paper we study determinants of relative poverty among immigrants and natives in Denmark and Sweden during the 1980s and 1990s. Denmark and Sweden share the same properties in a range of labour-market and welfare-state characteristics. At the same time, they differ very much in cyclical profiles and immigration experiences during recent decades. Both countries have followed the same principles regarding immigration policy, i.e. immigration from low-income countries has been restricted to tied movers and refugees. We use 60 percent of the median in the distribution of equivalent disposable income as the poverty line. Data comes from two large panels based on administrative data. We find that immigrants have higher poverty rates than natives in both countries and that this difference has clearly increased in both countries. The paper reports results based on running probability models of poverty incidence. Explanatory variables include years since immigration, demographic characteristics and country of origin. We conclude that a significant part of the difference in aggregate immigrant poverty rates reflects differences in composition by country of origin and differences in the structure of benefits to families with children.

The gender pay gap in top corporate jobs in Denmark: Glass ceilings, sticky floors or both?

This paper analyses the gender gap in compensation for CEOs, Vice-Directors, and potential top executives in the 2000 largest Danish private companies based on a panel data set of employer-employees data covering the period 1996-2005. During the period, the overall gender gap in compensation for top executives and potential top executives decreased from 35 percent to 31 percent. However, contrary to many other studies, we do not find that the gender gap for Danish top executives disappears when controlling for observed individual and firm characteristics and unobserved individual heterogeneity. For CEOs, the raw compensation gap is 28 percent during the period while the estimated compensation gap after controlling for observed and unobserved characteristics increases to 30 percent. For executives below the CEO level, the estimated compensation gap is lower, ranging from 15 to 20 percent. Thus, we find evidence of both glass ceilings and sticky floors in Danish private firms.

A Comparison of Different Estimators for Panel Data Sample Selection Models

In this paper, we perform an extensive Monte Carlo study of the finite sample properties of different estimators for panel data sample selection models. The estimators investigated are various two-step estimators and maximum likelihood estimators with simultaneous equations for the samle selection process and the equation of interest. The main result of the Monte Carlo study is that the maximum likelihood estimators of random effects models in general perform better than in two-step estimators

A Tale of Two Countries: Poverty and Income Distribution Among Immigrants in Denmark and Sweden Since 1984

In recent decades, low-skilled immigration to the rich OECD countries has been of increasing importance. Many European OECD countries were open to immigration by people from outside the rich OECD area until the first oil price shock in the mid-1970s. At that time, many countries, including Denmark and Sweden, enacted legislation to stop the flow of guest workers, and this has been in effect since then.

Do Children Stabilize Marriages

In this paper we study the relationship between fertility behavior and the process of marriage duration. The potential endogeneity of fertility on marriage behavior is taken into account by modeling fertility and divorce jointly. We apply the ”timing-of-event” method (Abbring & van den Berg (2002)) to identify the causal effect of births on the divorce hazard. We show that couples who are less prone to divorce are more prone to invest in children, and therefore one might (mistakenly) conclude that children tend to stabilize marriages. However, when correcting for the selectivity bias arising from the fertility decision, we conclude that children themselves do not have a positive effect on marriage duration.

Why are Well-Educated Women Not Full-Timers?

A high proportion of well-educated women in Denmark chooses to work part-time or completely stay outside the labour market. We analyse this phenomenon in a discrete choice dynamic programming framework, taking the potentially endogenous effect of work experience on annual earnings into account. The main findings are that the disutility of full-time work increases with obtained work experience and education. Only the level of returns to these variables serves to outweigh this effect, and results in a high degree of persistence in the full-time participation pattern. Simulation reveals that the participation pattern is significantly affected by changing returns to skills.