Wage Subsidies to Promote Female Hiring: Evidence from Pakistan
◈ 주 제 : Wage Subsidies to Promote Female Hiring: Evidence from Pakistan
◈ 발표자 : Jean Nahrae Lee (World Bank)
◈ 일 시 : 2024년 12월 16일 월요일 16:30 ~ 17:45
◈ 장 소 : 우석경제관(223동) 504호
◈ 주 관 : 경제학부, 경제연구소 한국경제혁신센터, SSK, BK21
Wage Subsidies to Promote Female Hiring: Evidence from Pakistan
Abstract:
Pakistan has one of the lowest female labor force participation rates in the world, but firm-side constraints to hiring women are not well understood. We conducted a randomized controlled trial with 1227 firms in Pakistan that advertised a job opening for a technical/professional role on the country’s largest online job search portal. We offered a 6-month wage subsidy to a randomly selected subset of the sample conditional on hiring a woman for the advertised role. The subsidy offer was made via the Becker-DeGroot-Marschak (BDM) mechanism, which elicited the minimum level of subsidy needed for the manager to hire a woman for the role. We find the average minimum subsidy level required by managers to hire a female is 15%, well below subsidy levels implemented in prior studies of women’s wage subsidies. We find that wage subsidy offers led to an 11 percentage point intent-to-treat increase in the likelihood of a woman being hired, with lasting and sizeable effects on gender preferences expressed in future job advertisements. Effects were particularly pronounced for firms with only male employees at baseline. The timing of effects is consistent with employer learning about the productivity and costs of hiring of women.