Article
The Role of Supervisors in the Determination of Wages and Wage Gaps
Applied Economics
(2014)
Abstract
This article considers labour market discrimination by supervisors as a potential contributor to racial and gender wage gaps. Empirical analysis reveals evidence that all workers, except Hispanic males, earn significantly higher hourly wages when working for a supervisor of the same race and sex as themselves. Furthermore, the results suggest that sex has a larger impact on wages than race for workers with white supervisors, while race has a larger impact on wages than sex for workers with minority supervisors. Based on past research, we theorize that the degree of labour discrimination workers face may also be dependent upon the location and size of the firm in which they are employed. However, decomposing the samples by firm location and size suggests that these two factors cannot adequately explain the observed matched supervisor–worker wage effects, which supports the notion that these wage effects are largely driven by factors other than supervisor discrimination.
Keywords
- labour discrimination,
- wage gaps,
- supervisor,
- race,
- gender,
- J15,
- J16,
- J31,
- J71
Disciplines
Publication Date
2014
DOI
10.1080/00036846.2014.934430
Citation Information
Joshua Pitts, Sandra Orozco-Aleman and Jon Rezek. "The Role of Supervisors in the Determination of Wages and Wage Gaps" Applied Economics Vol. 46 Iss. 29 (2014) p. 3533 - 3547 Available at: http://works.bepress.com/joshua-pitts/3/