Analyzing semiparametrically the trends in the gender pay gap - The example of Spain

Abstract

This article studies the trend in wage discrimination in Spain during the period 1995-2002. We first introduce a novel approach to the analysis of wage discrimination with methods which are rather robust to model (mis-)specification. To that end we apply semiparametric methods to the decomposition of wage differentials between men and women based on classical approaches. We extend the methodology to further decompositions and semiparametric quantile estimation, and discuss sample selection bias correction. In addition, to study inequality, some descriptive analysis is presented again using sophisticated nonparametric techniques.