Claudia Goldin: evaluation

Transcript context

…Another factor is that women may end up in jobs or in majors or with interests that pay less in the longer run. How do you assess the relative proportion of those two factors? Well, we do all sorts of calculations to try to figure out what’s happening within versus between. Of course, one of the problems that we always face is the issue of aggregation. The more you disaggregate occupations or firm occupation, the more you’re going to minimize the problems that are happening within. It’s my sense, from the work that I’ve done, that the issue of occupational segregation, for example, has been vastly reduced over time. What’s happening within occupations? The real challenge there is to understand whether individuals are being paid less for absolutely equivalent work within the same firm — and that is the standard federal guideline that one is looking for, that’s the smoking gun — or whether individuals are getting paid less, for example, because they’re working at the boutique law firm where they have amenities that they want, or whether they’re working at the Madison Avenue, Park Avenue law firm where they have fewer flexible amenities. I think that those are the challenges and the data challenges that we all have. As you may know, there’s a debate in experimental economics and also field experimental economics as to whether women are more averse to competition than men. One doesn’t have to think this is intrinsic; it could itself be the result of discrimination. But what’s your view there?…

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