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Salary History And Employer Demand: Evidence From A Two-Sided Audit, Amanda Agan, Bo Cowgill, Laura K. Gee

Upjohn Institute Working Papers

We study how salary disclosures affect employer demand using a field experiment featuring hundreds of recruiters evaluating over 2,000 job applications. We randomize the presence of salary questions and the candidates’ disclosures for male and female applicants. Our findings suggest that extra dollars disclosed yield higher salary offers, willingness to pay, and perceptions of outside options by recruiters (all similarly for men and women). Recruiters make negative inferences about the quality and bargaining positions of non-disclosing candidates, though they penalize silent women less.