Publications

2022
Working Paper

ESG Performance and Voluntary ESG Disclosure: Mind the (Gender Pay) Gap

By: June Huang and Shirley Lu

We study if firms with better ESG performance are more likely to provide voluntary ESG disclosure, an assumption embedded in many ESG ratings. We focus on gender diversity and proxy for performance using a firm's gender pay gap ("GPG") disclosed under a UK disclosure... View Details

Keywords: Pay Gap; Gender; Wages; Equality and Inequality; Corporate Disclosure; Policy; Diversity

SSRN

November 11, 2022
Editorial

Finally Companies Have to Be Upfront about Job Pay Ranges

By: Rosabeth Moss Kanter

The significance of pay transparency laws is their role in moving American workplaces away from bias and closer to equal opportunity. View Details

Keywords: Pay; Salary; Pay Gap; Transparency; Wages; Compensation and Benefits; Recruitment; Equality and Inequality

2021
Working Paper

Equilibrium Effects of Pay Transparency

By: Zoë B. Cullen and Bobak Pakzad-Hurson

The public discourse around pay transparency has focused on the direct effect: how workers seek to rectify newly-disclosed pay inequities through renegotiations. The question of how wage-setting and hiring practices of the firm respond in equilibrium has received... View Details

Keywords: Pay Transparency; Online Labor Market; Privacy; Wage Gap; Negotiation; Corporate Disclosure; Compensation and Benefits; Gender

January 2022
Article

Determinants of Gender Differences in Change in Pay among Job-Switching Executives

By: Boris Groysberg, Paul M. Healy and Eric Lin

The authors investigate what determines differences in change in pay between men and women executives who move to new employers. Using proprietary data of 2,034 executive placements from a global search firm, the authors observe narrower pay differences between men and... View Details

Keywords: Executive Pay; Executive Labor Market; Gender Pay Gap; External Recruitment; Executive Compensation; Gender; Human Capital

Purchase

May 2023
Article

Equilibrium Effects of Pay Transparency

By: Zoë B. Cullen and Bobak Pakzad-Hurson

The public discourse around pay transparency has focused on the direct effect: how workers seek to rectify newly-disclosed pay inequities through renegotiations. The question of how wage-setting and hiring practices of the firm respond in equilibrium has received... View Details

Keywords: Pay Transparency; Online Labor Market; Privacy; Wage Gap; Corporate Disclosure; Wages; Negotiation

2016
Working Paper

Equal Opportunity? Gender Gaps in CEO Appointments and Executive Pay

By: Matti Keloharju, Samuli Knüpfer and Joacim Tåg

This paper uses exceptionally rich data on Swedish corporate executives and their personal characteristics to study gender gaps in CEO appointments and pay. Both gaps are sizeable: 18% for CEO appointments and 27% for pay. At most one-eighth of the gaps can be... View Details

Keywords: Equality and Inequality; Executive Compensation; Gender; Sweden

SSRN

2021
Working Paper

The Old Boys' Club: Schmoozing and the Gender Gap

By: Zoë B. Cullen and Ricardo Perez-Truglia

Offices are social places. Employees and managers take breaks together and talk about family and hobbies. In this study, we show that employees’ social interactions with their managers can be advantageous for their careers, and that this phenomenon contributes to the... View Details

Keywords: Career; Promotions; Social Interactions; Networking; Gender; Personal Development and Career; Wages; Social and Collaborative Networks

14 Apr 2003
Research & Ideas

Pay-for-Performance Doesn’t Always Pay Off

their ability to reach if not surpass the goals, start banking on the extra money. In practice, however, the process of connecting pay to performance may be far trickier that it at first appears, according to HBS professor Michael Beer.... View Details

Keywords: by Martha Lagace

July 2023
Article

The Old Boys' Club: Schmoozing and the Gender Gap

By: Zoë B. Cullen and Ricardo Perez-Truglia

Offices are social places. Employees and managers take breaks together and talk about family and hobbies. In this study, we show that employees’ social interactions with their managers can be advantageous for their careers, and that this phenomenon contributes to the... View Details

Keywords: Career; Promotions; Social Interactions; Networking; Interpersonal Communication; Familiarity; Equality and Inequality; Gender

Purchase

Article

How Much (More) Should CEOs Make? A Universal Desire for More Equal Pay

By: Sorapop Kiatpongsan and Michael I. Norton

Do people from different countries and different backgrounds have similar preferences for how much more the rich should earn than the poor? Using survey data from 40 countries (N = 55,238), we compare respondents' estimates of the wages of people in different... View Details

Keywords: Inequality; Justice; Wage; Cross-cultural; Wages; Equality and Inequality; Fairness; Income; Employees; Management Teams; Cross-Cultural and Cross-Border Issues

02 Aug 2021
Research & Ideas

What If Closing the Wage Gap Means Everyone Earns Less?

touting their pay transparency policies as a means of ensuring fairness. But, as it turns out, pay transparency doesn’t necessarily increase workers’ wages, writes Harvard Business School professor Zoe... View Details

Keywords: by Avery Forman

Fall 2021
Article

Job-Hopping Toward Equity: Changing Employers Can Help Narrow the Gender Gap in Executive Compensation

By: Boris Groysberg, Paul M. Healy and Eric Lin

Changing employers has been linked to larger pay increases for executives and managers. Although survey-based studies suggest that men gain more than women, an analysis of more than 2,000 job moves found that executive women are commanding bigger increases than men... View Details

Keywords: Executive Compensation; Gender; Equality and Inequality

Register to Read

14 Jul 2014
Research & Ideas

Pay Attention To Your ‘Extreme Consumers’

was often predictable. The concept of talking to extreme consumers was developed to push students out of their comfort zone. "There is an enormous gap between chatting with your friends and chatting with people on the streets in Vietnam,"... View Details

Keywords: by Michael Blanding

September 2024
Article

Gender Gaps: Back and Here to Stay? Evidence from Skilled Ugandan Workers During COVID-19

By: Livia Alfonsi, Mary Namubiru and Sara Spaziani

We investigate gender disparities in the effect of COVID-19 on the labor market outcomes of skilled Ugandan workers. Leveraging a high-frequency panel dataset, we find that the lockdowns imposed in Uganda reduced employment by 69% for women and by 45% for men,... View Details

Keywords: COVID-19; Wage Gap; Gender; Equality and Inequality; Employment; Wages; Uganda

25 May 2011
HBS Case

QuikTrip’s Investment in Retail Employees Pays Off

to begin to address the income inequality gap and offer some measure of stability to employees who don't always enjoy that quality in their work lives." View Details

Keywords: by Julia Hanna; Retail

07 Feb 2023
Research & Ideas

Supervisor of Sandwiches? More Companies Inflate Titles to Avoid Extra Pay

research out of Harvard Business School. In fact, these are just a handful of suspect titles companies are using to classify hourly workers as supervisors and avoid paying an estimated $4 billion in overtime a year, finds a study by... View Details

Keywords: by Scott Van Voorhis

November 2013
Article

Which U.S. Market Interactions Affect CEO Pay? Evidence from UK Companies

By: Joseph Gerakos, Joseph Piotroski and Suraj Srinivasan

This paper examines how different types of interactions with U.S. markets by non-U.S. firms are associated with higher level of CEO pay, greater emphasis on incentive-based compensation, and smaller pay gap with U.S. firms. Using a sample of CEOs of UK firms and using... View Details

Keywords: CEO Compensation; International Pay; Incentives; Cross-listing; United Kingdom; Motivation and Incentives; Executive Compensation; Globalization; Corporate Governance; United Kingdom; United States

SSRN