Volume 37, Number 2 (Spring) 2002
Hellerstein, Judith K., David Neumark, and Kenneth R. Troske. 2002. "Market Forces and Sex Discrimination." Journal of Human Resources 37(2):353-380.
We report new evidence on the existence of sex discrimination in wages and whether competitive market forces reduce or eliminate discrimination, based on plant- and firm-level data on profitability, growth and ownership changes, product market power, and workforce sex composition. Our strongest finding is that among plants with high levels of product market power, those employing more women are more profitable, consistent with sex discrimination in the short run when plants have product market power. We do not find that these discriminatory employers are punished over time through lower growth, or are bought out by nondiscriminators.
Judith K. Hellerstein is an associate professor of economics at the University of Maryland, and a re search associate of the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER). David Neumark is a professor of economics at Michigan State University, a visiting fellow at the Public Policy Institute of California, and a research associate of the NBER. Kenneth R. Troske is an associate professor of economics at the University of Missouri, and a researcher at the U.S. Census Bureau's Center for Economic Studies. The authors are grateful to Kim Bayard, Nicole Nestoriak, and Gigi Foster for outstanding research assistance, and to Bob Frank, anonymous referees, and seminar participants at Carnegie-Mellon, Cornell, Johns Hopkins. the University of Maryland, Michigan State, the University of Missouri, Wharton, and the NBER Summer Institute for helpful comments. This research was supported by NSF grant SBR95-10876 through the NBER. All opinions. findings, and conclusions expressed herein are those of the authors and do not in any way reflect the views of the U.S. Census Bureau. The data used in this article were collected under the provisions of Title 13 U.S. Code and are only available at the Center for Economic Studies. U.S. Census Bureau. To obtain access to these data. contact the Center for Economic Studies. U.S. Census Bureau, Rm. 211/WPII, Washington, D.C. 20233.
© 2003 by the Board of Regents of the University of Wisconsin System
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