Trond Petersen

Separate and Unequal: Occupation-Establishment Sex Segregation and the Gender Wage Gap'

The authors report the first large-scale empirical investigation of within-job wage differences between men and women in the same occupation and establishment, using data first on blue-collar and clerical employees from 16 U.S. industries in 1974-83 and second on employees in 10 professional and administrative occupations. The authors report three findings. First, wage differences at the occupation-establishment level were small even without controls for individual-level characteristics. Hence, within-job wage discrimination was much less important than occupation-establishment segregation for observed wage differences. Second, establishment segregation was an important cause, although not as important as occupational segregation, of wage differences. Third, establishment segregation was extensive, as was occupational segregation.

Offering a Job: Meritocracy and Social Networks.

This study focuses on the impact of sex, race, and social networks, to analyze the hiring process in a midsized high‐technology organization, using information on all 35,229 applicants in a 10‐year period (1985–94). For gender, the process is entirely meritocratic: age and education account for all sex differences. But even without taking into account the two meritocratic variables, there are small if no differences between men and women at all stages in the hiring process. For ethnic minorities, the process is partly meritocratic but partly reliant upon social networks. Once referral method is taken into account, all race effects disappear. In hiring, ethnic minorities are thus disadvantaged in the processes that take place before the organization is contacted. They lack access to or utilize less well the social networks that lead to high success in getting hired.

The opportunity structure for discrimination

Gender disparities in wages and attainment caused by employer discrimination can come about by three very different processes: allocative discrimination, within‐job wage discrimination, and valuative discrimination. For the United States, it has been established that within‐job wage discrimination no longer is a major source of wage differences, while valuative discrimination potentially is. Less known is the role of allocative discrimination, especially in the hiring process, which we identify as the point where discrimination is most feasible. Our analysis uses personnel data on all entrants into a large U.S. service organization in the period 1978–86, focusing on managerial, administrative, and professional employees. We study the placement at initial hire and then follow job levels, wages, promotions, as well as departures, in years subsequent to hire.

The Statistical Analysis of Event Histories

Event histories are generated so-called failure-time processes and take this form. The dependent variable—for example, some social state—is discrete or continuous. Over time it evolves as follows: For finite periods of time (from one calendar date to another) it stays constant at a given value. At a later date, which is a random variable, the dependent variable jumps to a new value. The process evolves in this manner from the calendar date when one change occurs to a later date when another change occurs. Between the dates of the changes, the dependent variable stays constant. Data on such processes typically contain information about (a) the date a sample member entered a social state; (b) the date the state later was left, if left; (c) the value of the next state entered; and so on. In analyzing such data, the foci are on what determines the amount of time spent in each state and on what determines the value of the next state entered. This article describes how one can use continuous-time hazard rate models to address these two foci when analyzing event histories.

Equal Pay for Equal Work? Evidence from Sweden and a Comparison with Norway and the U.S.

Using a new data set covering most privately employed workers in Sweden, we compare gender wage differences to those previously reported for Norway and the U.S. The central finding is that the wage gap is small when comparing men and women working in the same type of occupation for the same employer. Segregation of men and women by occupation accounts for more of the gap in Sweden than in the other two countries. In all three countries, we find that segregation by occupation explains more than segregation by establishment, and that institutional changes over the past two decades aimed at improving the status of women had little effect on the gender wage gap. Copyright 2001 by The editors of the Scandinavian Journal of Economics.

Time-Aggregation Bias in Continuous-Time Hazard-Rate Models

In analyses of event-history data, the estimators for the parameters of the process (i. e., of the hazard rate) typically assume that the available measures of time are continuous. The assumption that time is exactly or continuously measured is rarely met. Instead, researchers typically know that the amount of time spent in a state lies between, say, j 1 and j months, but not the exact time within that window. Researchers then customarily set the duration in the state equal to j and treat this as the exact duration. Or, if censoring occurred between j 1 and j, they set the censoring time equal to j. These practices give rise to some bias in the estimates, called time-aggregation bias. In this paper I address two issues in connection with timeaggregation bias. First, I discuss the size of the bias when an estimator based on exact measurements of durations is applied to grouped measurements of durations. Second, I discuss how one can minimize the time-aggregation bias when using an estimator that assumes exact measurements of durations. This amounts to asking the following question: If an event occurred between duration j 1 and j, what is the optimal choice for the assigned duration t? Or, if censoring occurred between j 1

Analysis of Event Histories

Event histories are generated by so-called failure-time processes and take the following form. The dependent variable—for example, some social state—is discrete or continuous. Over time it evolves as follows. For finite periods of time (from one calendar date to another) it stays constant at a given value. At a later date, which is a random variable, the dependent variable jumps to a new value. The process evolves in this manner from the calendar date, when one change occurs, to a later date, when another change occurs. Between the dates of the changes, the dependent variable stays constant.

The Economics of Organization: The Principal-Agent Relationship:

Industrial sociology was one of the strongest fields m the discipline during the 1950s. Its focus was primarily on the internal organization of firms: on reward systems, on social rewards between workers, on the culture of the workplace, and m particular on the relationship between formal and informal organization. A central feature of this literature was that it bordered on bemg empir~cist: through careful ethnographies researchers gave juicy accounts of workplace behavior, accounts that were often outstanding in their descriptive richness, but which usually lacked the theoretical ambition expected during the last decade

Individual, Collective, and Systems Rationality in Work Groups: Dilemmas and Market-Type Solutions

In work teams two situations often arise: first, one can observe only the output of the work group, not the contributions of each member; second, the output of each member depends not only on herown effort but also on those of co-workers as well. The problem that arises is how to construct reward schemes. Group piece-rate schemes are often suggested as a solution. However, these are susceptible to free-rider problems. A classical solution relies on a supervisor who keeps free riders in line. This article duscusses another solution where the relationship between output and reward is highly nonlinear.

From Motherhood Penalties to Husband Premia: The New Challenge for Gender Equality and Family Policy, Lessons from Norway

Given the key role that processes occurring in the family play in creating gender inequality, the family is a central focus of policies aimed at creating greater gender equality. We examine how family status affects the gender wage gap using longitudinal matched employer-employee data from Norway, 1979–96, a period with extensive expansion of family policies. The motherhood penalty dropped dramatically from 1979 to 1996. Among men the premia for marriage and fatherhood remained constant. In 1979, the gender wage gap was primarily due to the motherhood penalty, but by 1996 husband premia were more important than motherhood penalties.