The aim of my dissertation is to study the gender wage gap with a specific focus on developing and
transition countries. In the first chapter I present the main existing theories proposed to analyse the
gender wage gap and I review the empirical literature on the gender wage gap in developing and
transition countries and its main findings. Then, I discuss the overall empirical issues related to the
estimation of the gender wage gap and the issues specific to developing and transition countries.
The second chapter is an empirical analysis of the gender wage gap in a developing countries, the
Union of Comoros, using data from the multidimensional household budget survey “Enquete
integrale auprès des ménages” (EIM) run in 2004. The interest of my work is to provide a
benchmark analysis for further studies on the situation of women in the Comorian labour market
and to contribute to the literature on gender wage gap in Africa by making available more
information on the dynamics and mechanism of the gender wage gap, given the limited interest on
the topic in this area of the world. The third chapter is an applied analysis of the gender wage gap in
a transition country, Poland, using data from the Labour Force Survey (LSF) collected for the years
1994 and 2004. I provide a detailed examination of how gender earning differentials have changed
over the period starting from 1994 to a more advanced transition phase in 2004, when market
elements have become much more important in the functioning of the Polish economy than in the
earlier phase. The main contribution of my dissertation is the application of the econometrical
methodology that I describe in the beginning of the second chapter. First, I run a preliminary OLS
and quantile regression analysis to estimate and describe the raw and conditional wage gaps along
the distribution. Second, I estimate quantile regressions separately for males and females, in order
to allow for different rewards to characteristics. Third, I proceed to decompose the raw wage gap
estimated at the mean through the Oaxaca-Blinder (1973) procedure. In the second chapter I run a
two-steps Heckman procedure by estimating a model of participation in the labour market which
shows a significant selection bias for females. Forth, I apply the Machado-Mata (2005) techniques
to extend the decomposition analysis at all points of the distribution. In Poland I can also implement
the Juhn, Murphy and Pierce (1991) decomposition over the period 1994-2004, to account for
effects to the pay gap due to changes in overall wage dispersion beyond Oaxaca’s standard
decomposition.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:unibo.it/oai:amsdottorato.cib.unibo.it:794 |
| Date | 16 June 2008 |
| Creators | Valmori, Simona <1978> |
| Contributors | Lehmann, Hartmut |
| Publisher | Alma Mater Studiorum - Università di Bologna |
| Source Sets | Università di Bologna |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Doctoral Thesis, PeerReviewed |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Rights | info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess |
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