The authors study compensation packages in family-owned and nonfamily-owned firms. Using French matched employer-employee data, they first show that family firms pay on average lower wages. Part of this wage gap is attributable to low-wage workers sorting into family firms and high-wage workers sorting into nonfamily firms; however, they also find evidence that company wage policies differ according to ownership status, so that the same worker is paid differently under family and nonfamily firm ownership. In addition, family firms are characterized by lower job insecurity, as measured by lower dismissal rates. Family firms also appear to rely less on dismissals, and more on hiring reductions, than do nonfamily firms when they downsize. The authors show that compensating wage differentials account for a substantial part of the inverse relationship between the family/nonfamily gaps in wages and job security. F amily-owned firms are ubiquitous in most countries. Bloom and Van Reenen (2007) estimate that 28% of medium-sized manufacturing firms are owned by a family in the United States, and that the proportion is even larger in Europe: 46% in the United Kingdom, 37% in Germany, and 56% in France. Family firms are also numerous in emerging countries (see La *Andrea Bassanini is Senior Economist at Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). Thomas Breda is affiliated with the

The so-called “gender-equality paradox” is the fact that gender segregation across occupations is more pronounced in more egalitarian and more developed countries. Some scholars have explained this paradox by the existence of deeply rooted or intrinsic gender differences in preferences that materialize more easily in countries where economic constraints are more limited. In line with a strand of research in sociology, we show instead that it can be explained by cross-country differences in essentialist gender norms regarding math aptitudes and appropriate occupational choices. To this aim, we propose a measure of the prevalence and extent of internalization of the stereotype that “math is not for girls” at the country level. This is done using individual-level data on the math attitudes of 300,000 15-y-old female and male students in 64 countries. The stereotype associating math to men is stronger in more egalitarian and developed countries. It is also strongly associated with various measures of female underrepresentation in math-intensive fields and can therefore entirely explain the gender-equality paradox. We suggest that economic development and gender equality in rights go hand-in-hand with a reshaping rather than a suppression of gender norms, with the emergence of new and more horizontal forms of social differentiation across genders.

International audienceThis article identifies the wage premium associated with firm-level union recognition in France. An average premium of 2% is found despite the fact that most workers are already covered by industry-level agreements. To explore the origin of the premium, I construct a simple bargaining model from which I derive three predictions, which are tested empirically using matched employer–employee data. The main prediction is that if intra-firm bargaining is behind the union wage premium, the latter increases with the amount of quasi-rents available in the firms that unions organise. This prediction is validated empirically when firms' market shares are used as a proxy for their rents

Gender differences in math performance are now small in developed countries and they cannot explain on their own the strong underrepresentation of women in math-related fields. This latter result is however no longer true once gender differences in reading performance are also taken into account. Using individual-level data on 300,000 15-y-old students in 64 countries, we show that the difference between a student performance in reading and math is 80% of a standard deviation (SD) larger for girls than boys, a magnitude considered as very large. When this difference is controlled for, the gender gap in students’ intentions to pursue math-intensive studies and careers is reduced by around 75%, while gender gaps in self-concept in math, declared interest for math or attitudes toward math entirely disappear. These latter variables are also much less able to explain the gender gap in intentions to study math than is students’ difference in performance between math and reading. These results are in line with choice models in which educational decisions involve intraindividual comparisons of achievement and self-beliefs in different subjects as well as cultural norms regarding gender. To directly show that intraindividual comparisons of achievement impact students’ intended careers, we use differences across schools in teaching resources dedicated to math and reading as exogenous variations of students’ comparative advantage for math. Results confirm that the comparative advantage in math with respect to reading at the time of making educational choices plays a key role in the process leading to women’s underrepresentation in math-intensive fields.

International audienceWe investigate the link between how male-dominated a field is, and gender bias against women in this field. Taking the entrance exam of a French higher education institution as a natural experiment, we find that evaluation is actually biased in favor of females in more male-dominated subjects (e.g., math, philosophy) and in favor of males in more female-dominated subjects (e.g., literature, biology), inducing a rebalancing of gender ratios between students recruited for research careers in science and humanities majors. Evaluation bias is identified from systematic variations across subjects in the gap between students' nonanonymous oral and anonymous written test scores

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Standard-Nutzungsbedingungen:Die Dokumente auf EconStor dürfen zu eigenen wissenschaftlichen Zwecken und zum Privatgebrauch gespeichert und kopiert werden.Sie dürfen die Dokumente nicht für öffentliche oder kommerzielle Zwecke vervielfältigen, öffentlich ausstellen, öffentlich zugänglich machen, vertreiben oder anderweitig nutzen.Sofern die Verfasser die Dokumente unter Open-Content-Lizenzen (insbesondere CC-Lizenzen) zur Verfügung gestellt haben sollten, gelten abweichend von diesen Nutzungsbedingungen die in der dort genannten Lizenz gewährten Nutzungsrechte. Terms of use: Documents in EconStor may D I S C U S S I O N P A P E R S E R I E S Teaching Accreditation Exams Reveal Grading Biases 2Why are women underrepresented in most areas of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM)? One of the most common explanations is that a hiring bias against women exists in those fields (1-4). This explanation is supported by a few older experiments (5-7), a recent one with fictitious resumes (8), and a recent lab experiment (9), suggesting that the phenomenon still prevails.However some scholars have challenged this view (10, 11) and another recent experiment with fictitious resumes finds a bias in favor of women in academic recruitment (12). Studies based on actual hiring also find that when women apply to tenure-track STEM positions, they are more likely to be hired (13-18). However, those studies do not control for applicants' quality and a frequent claim is that their results simply reflect that only the best female PhDs apply to these positions while a larger fraction of males do so (11,13). A study by one of us did partly control for applicants' quality and reported a bias in favor of women in maledominated fields (19). However, it has limited external validity since it only relies on 3,000 candidates at the French Ecole Normale Supérieure entrance exam.The present analysis is based on a natural experiment over 100,000 individuals who participate in competitive exams used to hire French primary, secondary and college/university teachers over the period 2006-2013. It has two distinct advantages over all previous studies. First, it provides large-scale real-world evidence on gender biases in evaluation-based hiring in several fields. Second, it shows that those biases against or in favor of women are strongly shaped by the actual degree of female under-representation in the field in which the evaluation takes place, partly reconciling existing studies.Carefully taking into account the extent of under-representation of women in 11 academic fields allows us to extend the analysis beyond the STEM distinction. As pointed out recently (11)(12)(19)(20), the focus on STEM versus non STEM fields can be misleading to understand female underrepresentation in academia as some STEM fields are not dominated by men (e.g. 54% of U.S. Ph.Ds. in molecular biology are women (21)) while some non-STEM fields, including humanities, are male-dominated (e.g. only 31% of U.S. PhDs. in philosophy are women (21)). A better pre...