Eliot, Sherman;
Brands, Raina;
Gillian, Ku;
(2023)
Dropping Anchor: A Field Experiment Assessing a Salary
History Ban with Archival Replication.
Management Science
10.1287/mnsc.2022.4658.
(In press).
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Abstract
Could a salary history ban (SHB) reduce the gender wage gap? Proponents of this intervention believe the gap is sustained by the practice of eliciting salary histories from job applicants. Although observational studies suggest that SHB operates as envisioned, two features complicate the interpretation of its effects. These are, respectively, the passage of relevant legislation alongside SHB, and the presence of public campaigns that propel SHB into law. We assessed SHB in the United Kingdom, where neither potential confound was present, and did not find evidence that the intervention operated as intended. An intention-to-treat analysis of a 16-month field experiment, conducted with 230 staff hires at a private educational institution, indicates that SHB was about as likely to harm new hires as it was to help them. Additional analyses did not reveal significant differences between women and men. We supplement these results with an interrupted time series analysis of 3,687 placements made by a recruitment firm that voluntarily adopted SHB for its job candidates. Salaries were significantly lower under SHB, but were not significantly different for women versus men. Taken together, our results suggest that SHB was ineffective in isolation from contemporaneous legislative changes, proequality messaging, or some combination thereof. This paper was accepted by Olav Sorenson, organizations. Supplemental Material: Data are available at https://doi.org/10.1287/mnsc.2022.4658 .
| Type: | Article |
|---|---|
| Title: | Dropping Anchor: A Field Experiment Assessing a Salary History Ban with Archival Replication |
| Open access status: | An open access version is available from UCL Discovery |
| DOI: | 10.1287/mnsc.2022.4658 |
| Publisher version: | https://doi.org/10.1287/mnsc.2022.4658 |
| Language: | English |
| Additional information: | This version is the author accepted manuscript. For information on re-use, please refer to the publisher’s terms and conditions. |
| Keywords: | organizational studies, behavior, personnel |
| UCL classification: | UCL UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL BEAMS UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL BEAMS > Faculty of Engineering Science UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL BEAMS > Faculty of Engineering Science > UCL School of Management |
| URI: | https://discovery-pp.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10166192 |
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