Using administrative data for West Germany, this paper investigates whether part of the urban wage premium stems from fierce competition in thick labour markets. We first establish that employers possess less wage-setting power in denser markets. Local differences in wage-setting power predict...

Using linked employer-employee panel data for West Germany that include direct information on the competition faced by plants, we investigate the effect of product market competition on the gender pay gap. Controlling for match fixed effects we find that intensified competition significantly...

This paper investigates whether non-base compensation contributes to the gender pay gap. In wage decompositions, we find that lower bonus payments to women explain about 10% of the gap at the mean and at different quantiles of the unconditional wage distribution whereas the lower prevalence of...