We gratefully acknowledge funding from ADR UK (Administrative Data Research UK) and the Economic and Social Research Council (Grant No. ES/T013877/1). The work is based on analysis of the research-ready datasets from the Annual Survey of Hours and Earnings (ASHE) (ONS, 2024a), Business Structure...

A large body of literature has shown that the gender wage gap is small in the first years after graduation and increases gradually with age, largely because of family decisions, i.e., a penalty caused by childbirth. However, the gender wage gap immediately after graduation has received less...

This paper uses microdata from the Labor Force and Household Surveys conducted in Afghanistan to show the wage premium differences for education between men and women, documenting a significantly larger premium for women. This sharp distinction is causal as demonstrated by analysis of the...

Using longitudinal data of college graduates in Colombia, we estimate labor market returns to postsecondary degrees and to various skills - including literacy, numeracy, foreign language, and field-specific skills. Graduates of academic programs and schools of higher reputation obtain higher...

Thanks to standardized work protocol and technology of McDonald's restaurants, the hourly wage of McDonald's Basic Crew enables wage comparisons under near-identical skill inputs and hedonic job conditions. McWages capture labor costs in entry-level jobs, while the Big Macs (earned) Per Hour...

Exploiting rich nationally representative longitudinal data from the China Family Panel Studies this paper explores the relationship between overeducation, earnings and job satisfaction among graduates in China. We find consistent evidence, across multiple measures of overeducation, of wage and...

The increase in the real wages of British workers over the last one hundred years is often attributed to the growth in labour productivity, but this has rarely been confirmed. In the research reported here, this ascription is confronted with annual observations on wages and productivity spanning...

Government procurement accounts for a significant share of GDP, and environmental, social and corporate governance (ESG) clauses in government contracts have become common across developed economies. This paper studies one of these clauses: living wages that are set considerably higher than...

Using French administrative data we estimate the wage gap distribution between in-house and temporary agency workers working in the same establishment and the same occupation. The average wage gap is about 3%, but the gap is negative in more than 25% of establishment × occupation cells. We...

A main driver of the gender wage gap is that women earn a lower firm-specific wage premium than men. We document the role of flexible wage components in driving both within-firm and between-firm gender differences in firm premia. For this purpose, we link wage survey data on performance payments...