Gender Discrimination and Economic Outcome in European Union

Abstract

This project presents a systematic and complete agenda to study the gender labour market discrimination in European Union (EU) member states. This agenda will allow us not only to properly detect gender discrimination but also fully understand its consequences. I seek to do this by using three different sources of information. The first source of information is a new and rich longitudinal data set containing detailed labour market histories of a representative sample of 3 parts of European member states: (1) member states to 2004, (2) member states from 2004, (3) member states from 2007 including CROATIA in this group The Social Protection Survey (SPS). This data set it will be available in the beginning of the research. My second source of information will be a new survey, carefully designed to measure cognitive and non-cognitive abilities at the individual level. Finally, I plan to use the information from an audit study in which I will send written applications to real job advertisements in particular selected states. Altogether, these sources of information will provide a unique opportunity to (i) re-analyse the previous findings in the literature and (ii) go beyond what have been done in EU to detect and understand the gender labour market discrimination phenomenon. With the first source of information (SPS) I will correct the estimates of gender discrimination by adding controls for the labour history of the workers, marital and maternal histories, family characteristics (parents education, number of siblings, etc.) and school performance and quality. The second source of information will be I think the first attempt in EU to measure cognitive and non-cognitive abilities and their effects on economic outcomes. Recent outstanding theoretical and empirical literature centres its attention on these issues. Finally, with the audit study (the third component of my agenda) we will be able to follow the field experiment approach to study the presence of gender discrimination in the labour market. In this experiment I will send pairs of identical written applications differing only in the applicant's gender. Additionally, I will explore the importance of the neighbourhood effects and beauty by introducing the dimension of geographical location and including pictures in the job applications. I expect my study to have a major influence on the way public policy is designed in EU.