BREDA Thomas

Even though they have contracted, gender pay inequality remains significant: in 2018 women have on average 25% lower wages than men. The size of this gap, however, varies from 5 to 25 percent depending on how it is measured. The use of different inequality indicators is necessary: each has its own logic and the comparison of different measures offers useful keys to understanding for the design of relevant public policies. We show here that a substantial part of inequality is explained by segregation between firms, with women working on average in firms offering lower wages. Thus, in order to completely eliminate gender pay inequalities, it is not enough to impose equal pay on firms and other policies will be necessary. In order to summarize these different measures of gender pay gaps, the IPP is launching a new online tool that allows users to make their own methodological choices and to visualize in a few clicks the evolution of pay gaps over time according to different modalities and in different groups of employees and companies.

In France, the unionization rate in 2017 is estimated to be around 11%. Among all members, women represent 36%. While we are witnessing a relative feminization of the union fabric under the impetus of the "women's cause space", women are still underrepresented, both at the bottom of the hierarchy among members, at intermediate levels among workplace activists, and in executive positions in union organizations. Although women have massively invested the salaried labor market since the end of World War II, unions have long been reluctant to open up to women, oscillating between proclaiming their right to work and sending them back to the home.To understand the permanence of this observation, the thesis proposes to study the construction of union careers in the light of the question of the articulation of the life spheres of CFDT activists. Through the notion of biographical availability, which refers to a relative absence of biographical constraints (family, professional, financial, etc.) and which tends to make activism time-consuming and/or risky, the thesis invites us to take seriously the temporal dimension in the process of manufacturing union commitment and its inequalities within France's leading union.This thesis is based first of all on documentary research from the CFDT's confederal archives. From the study of leaflets, femininity and masculinity, like mobile cursors, allow us to approach the relationship of the union organization to the cause of women in a historical way. It is then based on a corpus of 40 biographical interviews of CFDT activists conducted in each stratum of the organization: by a professional and sectoral axis on the one hand, and interprofessional and territorial on the other. Finally, it is based on the creation of a new national statistical survey: the EPASY survey, which retrospectively and jointly retraces the professional, intimate and trade union dimensions of 1115 CFDT activists. This research first highlights the weight of biographical availability in the construction of militant careers in union space and time. Depending on certain professional and family configurations, union careers accelerate or slow down. Union involvement and its level are more or less facilitated. But this biographical availability is the place of inequalities according to the gender and the class of belonging of the activists, in particular according to the level of economic, cultural and activist resources.

The so-called “gender-equality paradox” is the fact that gender segregation across occupations is more pronounced in more egalitarian and more developed countries. Some scholars have explained this paradox by the existence of deeply rooted or intrinsic gender differences in preferences that materialize more easily in countries where economic constraints are more limited. In line with a strand of research in sociology, we show instead that it can be explained by cross-country differences in essentialist gender norms regarding math aptitudes and appropriate occupational choices. To this aim, we propose a measure of the prevalence and extent of internalization of the stereotype that “math is not for girls” at the country level. This is done using individual-level data on the math attitudes of 300,000 15-y-old female and male students in 64 countries. The stereotype associating math to men is stronger in more egalitarian and developed countries. It is also strongly associated with various measures of female underrepresentation in math-intensive fields and can therefore entirely explain the gender-equality paradox. We suggest that economic development and gender equality in rights go hand-in-hand with a reshaping rather than a suppression of gender norms, with the emergence of new and more horizontal forms of social differentiation across genders.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTSThis work was done in the context of a research partnership between theInstitutdes politiques publiquesand theDirection de l’Animation de la Recherche, des Etudeset des Statistiques(Dares) at the French Ministry of Labor. We thank the Dares forits financial support that made it possible to realise this study.Our partners at the Dares have also provided several suggestions that dramat-ically improved the quality of the report. We would like to thank in particular fortheir useful feedback Cécile Ballini, Mathilde Gaini and Philippe Zamora. We alsothank them warmly for their patience and flexibility throughout the project.We then thank warmly the IPP team for constant support with the project. Weare particularly grateful to Julien Grenet as he suggested the central idea that isinvestigated in Chapter 4 of this report, and provided insightful comments through-out the project. Marion Monnet also deserves to be thanked for participating in themanagement of the project at its initial stage, and helping throughout.This report was written after the organization by the Dares and the IPP of aworking group on skills and skill mismatch. We would like to thank all participantsand their institutions for their feedback when we presented preliminary versionsof our work to the group. We also thank the OECD which allowed us to access aslightly enriched version of the PIAAC data, which was very useful to undertake theanalyses presented in the report.

In 2016, in private companies with 50 or more employees, the average hourly wage for women was 19% lower than for men. Once the effect of age and socio-professional categories is taken into account, the remaining wage gap is 12%. In September 2018, the French government took a set of measures to reduce these inequalities. Among them, the professional equality index must thus be calculated and published by all private companies with more than 50 employees from March 1, 2020. The aim is for companies to obtain a minimum value for this index, failing which they will be subject to sanctions. The index is a summary of several indicators, each covering an important aspect of gender inequality in the workplace and calculated on the basis of the employment situation of women and men employees in companies. Based on administrative data, we calculate the indicators that make up the index for all French companies in an approximate manner and provide an overview of the extent of gender inequality in the workplace as measured at the company level. We also document the effects of some of the methodological choices made in calculating the index, and suggest possible alternatives. These alternatives could allow us to better target companies with high gender inequalities.

No summary available.

In France, as in most developed countries, the underrepresentation of women in scientific fields is a significant barrier to professional equality. Since 2014, the L'Oréal Foundation's For Girls in Science awareness-raising program has offered one-hour interventions that are delivered in classrooms by young women with a scientific background (L'Oréal Group employees and young researchers). The objective of these interventions is to counteract the stereotypes associated with scientific careers and the place of women in science, in order to make scientific careers more attractive to young girls. Based on a random assignment evaluation protocol involving nearly 20,000 students enrolled in the second and final year of science classes in a hundred high schools in the Ile-de-France region in 2015-2016, we show that these one-time interventions lead to a significant decrease in students' stereotypical representations of science careers and gendered differences in aptitude for science, for both girls and boys. Although these interventions have no detectable impact on the study choices of students in the second year of secondary school and of boys in the final year of secondary school, they do have significant effects on the post-baccalaureate orientation of girls in the final year of secondary school: among the latter, the proportion going on to a scientific preparatory class (CPGE) has increased from 11% to 14.5% (i.e. an increase of 30%). One of the lessons of the study is that the ability to influence the career choices of young girls does not depend solely on the effectiveness of female role models in deconstructing stereotypes concerning scientific professions and the place of women and men in science, but also on the type of identification triggered by exposure to the model. In France, as in most developed nations, the under-representation of women in the sciences is a major obstacle to achieving equality in the workplace.

In France, as in most developed nations, the under-representation of women in the sciences is a major obstacle to achieving equality in the workplace. Since 2014, the For Girls in Science awareness programme run by Fondation L’Oréal has offered one-hour classroom talks by young women with a science background (women working for the L’Oréal group and young researchers). These talks aim to combat the stereotypes associated with science-related careers and with women’s role in the sciences, in order to make science more attractive to young women. Using a random assignment evaluation protocol on nearly 20,000 pupils in seconde (Year 11) and terminale scientifique (Year 13) year groups at French high schools in 2015-2016, we show that these one-hour talks lead to a significant reduction in pupils’ stereotypical representations of science-related careers and gender differences in scientific ability, among both girls and boys. Although the talks have no discernible impact on choice of educational track for all pupils in seconde and for boys in terminale S, they have significant effects on the post-baccalauréat track choices of girls in terminale S, for whom the proportion choosing a preparatory class for the most prestigious universities (CPGE) in a STEM subject rose from 11 to 14.5% (a 30% increase). One of the lessons learned from the study is that the ability to influence young girls’ career choices depends not only on how effectively the female role models bust the stereotypes associated with science-related careers and gender roles in science, but also on the type of identification engendered by exposure to the role model.

We study the earnings responses to three large increases in employer Social Security contributions (SSCs) in France. We find evidence of full pass-through to workers in the case of a strong and salient relationship between contributions and expected benefits. By contrast, we find limited pass-through of employer SSCs to wages for reforms that increased SSCs with no tax-benefit linkage. Together with a meta-analysis of the literature, we interpret these results as evidence that tax-benefit linkage and its salience matter for incidence, a claim long made by the literature but not backed by direct empirical evidence to date.

We evaluate the short- to medium-run effects on unionization and employers' and workers' trust in unions, of an important reform of French employment relations in 2008. This reform made the conditions for union recognition more liberal and democratic after 2008 in private firms with 11 employees or more. The law gave equal chances to all unions to be recognized for bargaining, putting an end to the quasi-monopoly given to five historical unions until then. The law also introduced votes and minimal electoral requirements to obtain union recognition. These new regulations only became fully effective at the first firms' work councils elections happening after January 1st, 2009. Those elections occur within each firm according to a pre-defined frequency - usually every four years -, so that election dates only depend on former election dates, and can be considered as quasi-random with respect to the application date of the new law, at least in firms that are old enough. The identification thus relies on a regression discontinuity design in which the running variable is the firms' work councils election date: we compare in early 2011 firms that had those elections just before or just after January 1st, 2009. We find that the democratic rules introduced in 2008 quickly improved employers' satisfaction and trust towards unions by around 45% of a standard deviation. Union coverage and membership at the establishment level also increased strongly due to the reform and work stoppages became more likely. Together, these results suggest that the introduction of electoral democracy in French firms managed to improve workers' participation in unions and their ability to voice concerns while also improving employers' opinions of unions.

Gender differences in math performance are now small in developed countries and they cannot explain on their own the strong under-representation of women in math-related fields. This latter result is however no longer true once gender differences in reading performance are also taken into account. Using individual-level data on 300,000 15-year-old students in 64 countries, we show that the difference between a student performance in reading and math is 80% of a standard deviation larger for girls than boys, a magnitude considered as very large. When this difference is controlled for, the gender gap in students' intentions to pursue math-intensive studies and careers is reduced by around 75%, while gender gaps in self-concept in math, declared interest for math or attitudes towards math entirely disappear. These latter variables are also much less able to explain the gender gap in intentions to study math than is students' difference in performance between math and reading. These results are in line with choice models in which educational decisions involve intra-individual comparisons of achievement and self-beliefs in different subjects as well as cultural norms regarding gender. To directly show that intra-individual comparisons of achievement impact students' intended careers, we use differences across schools in teaching resources dedicated to math and reading as exogenous variations of students comparative advantage for math. Results confirm that the comparative advantage in math with respect to reading at the time of making educational choices plays a key role in the process leading to women's under-representation in math-intensive fields.

While gender gaps in average math performance are now close to zero in developed countries, women are still strongly underrepresented among math high performers (1). This gender gap contributes to the underrepresentation of women in math and science in higher education and to their subsequent worse position in the labor market (2, 3). With the roles of nature and nurture (4–6) on gender performance gaps having been debated for more than a century, research in the 1990s and 2000s (7–9) suggested a cultural origin, relating gender gaps in math to measures of countries' gender inequality. However, with more recent studies (10–12) having shown that this relation is weak, today we have no clearly identified relationship between countries' socioeconomic or cultural environment and the gender gap in math. We relate below gender gaps in math to societal inequalities that are not directly related to gender. We find a strong and robust relationship and provide tests suggesting that it is causal: Countries that are generally more egalitarian, or that have institutions more conductive to equality, have a lower gender performance gap in math, suggesting that this gap is partly shaped by more general societal inequalities.

This paper reports the results of a large scale randomized experiment that was de- signed to assess whether a short in-class intervention by an external female role model can influence students’ attitudes towards science and contribute to a significant change in their choice of field of study. The intervention consists in a one hour, one off visit of a high school classroom by a volunteer female scientist. It is targeted to change students’ perceptions and attitudes towards scientific careers and the role of women in science, with the aim of ultimately reducing the gender gap in scientific studies. Using a random as- signment of the interventions to 10th and 12th grade classrooms during normal teaching hours, we find that exposure to female role models significantly reduces the prevalence of stereotypes associated with jobs in science, for both female and male students. While we find no significant effect of the classroom interventions on 10th grade students’ choice of high school track the following year, our results show a positive and significant impact of the intervention on the probability of applying and of being admitted to a selective science major in college among 12th grade students. This effect is essentially driven by high-achieving students and is larger for girls in relative terms. After the intervention, their probability to be enrolled in selective science programs after graduating from high school increases by 30 percent with respect to the baseline mean.

Although women now have more degrees on average than men in France, as in most developed countries, they remain largely underrepresented in scientific and technical fields and professions, particularly those related to mathematics, physics or computer science. The differences in skills between girls and boys in scientific subjects are small and can only explain a small part of these differences in orientation. Self-confidence, social norms and gender stereotypes are, however, increasingly cited as important explanatory factors. Based on a large-scale questionnaire survey of 8,500 high school students in the Ile-de-France region, this study aims to objectivize the existence of these factors and to link them to career choices. First, it documents the extent of the differences between girls and boys in terms of declared taste for science and self-confidence in scientific subjects. It then reveals that the prevalence of stereotypes concerning scientific professions and the place of women within these professions is far from negligible in the school environment. However, when we relate students' study choices to their level in mathematics and French, their declared taste for science, their self-confidence, and their stereotypical representations, we find that the level in mathematics and stereotypes only manage to explain a very small part of the differences in the orientation of girls and boys towards scientific fields. Conversely, declared taste for science and self-confidence in mathematics, whatever the indicator used to measure it, explain a significant part of the gender differences in orientation towards science.

Family firms are ubiquitous in most countries. The differences in objectives, governance, and management styles between those firms and their non-family counterparts have several implications for the workforce, which scholars have only recently started to investigate. Family firms offer greater job security, employ different management practices, have a comparative advantage to avoid conflicts when employment relations are more hostile, and provide insurance to workers through implicit contracts when labor market regulation is limited. But all this also comes at a cost.

The uncertainty surrounding the outcome of industrial tribunal proceedings is often pointed out as a possible obstacle to hiring. This uncertainty is partly generated by the fact that similar cases brought before the industrial tribunal are judged very differently from one case to another, or from one jurisdiction to another. After recalling the historical objective of the industrial tribunal system, its mode of operation and its recent developments, this note shows that the decisions rendered by the industrial tribunals do indeed vary greatly from one jurisdiction to another. The source of this variability remains uncertain: it may reflect the arbitrary nature of industrial tribunal justice as much as the fact that the cases judged by the different jurisdictions are of a different nature and gravity. Finally, this paper draws on the work of Desrieux and Espinosa to show that the union membership of judges elected by employees does not influence the decisions rendered by the industrial tribunals. This result makes it possible to rule out a possible source of bias in the justice rendered by the various industrial tribunals.

Social security contributions (SSCs) are typically formally split between employers and employees as payroll taxes, levied on earnings at a constant tax rate that applies only up to a ceiling, above which the marginal tax rate falls to a reduced rate, often 0. Such contribution ceilings create a concave kink point in the budget set of workers and hence should generate a dip in the distribution of earnings around the ceiling through labour supply responses (the reverse of bunching expected at convex kink points) but such a dip is not observed empirically. This paper sets out a new approach to infer the incidence of SSCs that exploits the absence of this dip and the fact that (mechanically) the distributions of labour cost (earnings inclusive of all payroll taxes), gross earnings (net of employer payroll taxes) and net earnings (net of both employer and employee payroll taxes) cannot all be smooth around a kink. The other papers in this special issue apply the method to data for Germany, France, the Netherlands and the UK and all find that distribution of gross earnings is smooth around kinks (implying that the distributions of labour costs and net-of-tax earnings are not) even though the concept of gross earnings is irrelevant in the standard static model of labour supply and demand that dominates the public economics literature. This suggests that other features of the labour market, such as wage bargaining based on the gross earnings concept, are relevant for determining the incidence of SSCs.

No summary available.

The uncertainty about the outcomes of proceedings before France’s employment tribunals (“les conseils de prud’hommes”, also known as “les prud’hommes”) is often pointed to as a possible damper on hiring of new staff. This uncertainty would appear to be generated in part by the fact that similar cases brought before them seem to be judged differently from one time to another or from one tribunal to another. After recalling the historic aim of the “institution prud’homale”, the way it works, and recent changes to it, this policy brief shows that the decisions rendered by the French employment tribunals do indeed vary strongly from one tribunal to another. However, the source of this variability remains in doubt: it might equally well reflect the arbitrary nature of “prud’homale” justice as the fact that the cases judged by the various tribunals are of different natures and of different seriousness. Finally, this policy brief uses the work of Desrieux and Espinosa to show that union membership of the judges elected by employees does not influence the decisions rendered by the French employment tribunals. These findings make it possible to dismiss a possible source of partiality in the justice rendered by the various tribunals.

The uncertainty about the outcomes of proceedings before France’s employment tribunals (“les conseils de prud’hommes”, also known as “les prud’hommes”) is often pointed to as a possible damper on hiring of new staff. This uncertainty would appear to be generated in part by the fact that similar cases brought before them seem to be judged differently from one time to another or from one tribunal to another. After recalling the historic aim of the “institution prud’homale”, the way it works, and recent changes to it, this policy brief shows that the decisions rendered by the French employment tribunals do indeed vary strongly from one tribunal to another. However, the source of this variability remains in doubt: it might equally well reflect the arbitrary nature of “prud’homale” justice as the fact that the cases judged by the various tribunals are of different natures and of different seriousness. Finally, this policy brief uses the work of Desrieux and Espinosa to show that union membership of the judges elected by employees does not influence the decisions rendered by the French employment tribunals. These findings make it possible to dismiss a possible source of partiality in the justice rendered by the various tribunals.

We study the incidence of social security contributions (SSCs) in France relying on the strategy developed by Alvaredo et al. (De Econ, 2017. doi:10.1007/s10645-017-9294-7). This strategy infers the incidence of SSCSs from the discontinuities in earnings distributions created by kink points in the SSC schedule. Using administrative data on earnings for the period 1976–2010, we study approximately 200 such kink points and do not find that they systematically induce a discontinuity in the distribution of gross earnings. This allows us to reject the hypothesis that SSCs are incident on workers, at least locally around kinks. Additionally, we exploit the large variations in SSC rates across kinks and years to estimate the local incidence of both employer and employee SSCs around these thresholds. We find that employer SSCs are shifted to employers while employee SSCs are shifted to employees. These findings are consistent with the economic incidence of SSCs being aligned with their statutory incidence, locally around kink points.

No summary available.

In this paper, we attempt to compare the potential employment and wage structure effects of the Competitiveness and Employment Tax Credit (CICE) and additional targeted contribution reductions, similar in format to those in force today. To this end, we build a search and matching model of the labor market, with heterogeneous employees and firms, productive complementarities, and wage negotiations. Individuals can be inactive, job seekers or employees. They may be looking for a job and receive offers when they are already working. Our theoretical contribution, as part of a broader research agenda, is to include both a minimum wage and wage taxation in such a model. The model is calibrated in different possible ways in the stationary state using employment statistics provided by INSEE and wage statistics calculated from the annual social data declarations (DADS). It is then used to perform counterfactual simulations. These simulations indicate that, at equivalent cost, the effect of the CICE on employment is systematically more limited than the effect of targeted contribution reductions. We conclude that a model that only takes into account the labor market but is "as rich as possible" does not allow us to estimate significant effects of the CICE on employment.

This paper makes two simple points. First, labour demand depends on product wage or labour cost. Hence, demand-side explanations for the rise in inequalities such as skill-biased technical change and job polarization should be tested using data on labour cost and not net wage or posted wage. Contrary to previous studies, we find evidence of skill-biased technical change in France when we measure wage inequality in terms of labour cost. In that respect, France is no exception. Second, the French case provides a clear evidence that changes in taxation can have very significant effect in converting market inequalities into consumption or net wages inequalities. In France, net wage inequalities have decreased by about 10%, while labour cost inequalities have increased by 15% over the 1976-2010 period. This fact provides support both for the supporters of the skill-biased technical change explanations of the secular increase in wage inequalities, as well to those who believe that institutions could have significant impact on inequalities in disposable incomes.

Little by little, during the 20th century, faced with the recurrent difficulties of employers' and trade unions' organizations to reach agreement on their own, the French State instituted, through legislation, a framework very favorable to the presence of trade unions in the company: establishment of staff delegates in 1936, irrebuttable presumption of representativeness for the CGT, CFDT, FO, CFTC and CGC in 1966, union delegates in 1968, compulsory annual negotiations on wages and working conditions in companies with unions with the Auroux laws in 1982. The constant efforts of the public authorities to stimulate collective bargaining explain in large part the high rate of contractual coverage in France.

There are more than half a million employee representatives in France, including those elected to the works council, the CHSCT and the trade union. While we readily point to a lack of social dialogue in this country, we may be surprised at the lack of studies devoted to its main players. What do we know about the motivations, the work done to inform and defend other employees, or the career development of employee representatives? How are they perceived by their colleagues and their employers? Are they discriminated against? Based on very rich but rarely used statistical sources, this book provides for the first time an overview of the activity of employee representatives. It shows that the legal framework in which they operate is inadequate and too often tends to set representatives, employees and employers against each other, and proposes solutions to ensure that employees' interests are better represented, without fear, during negotiations as well as in the daily life of companies.

If the presentation of the institutional rules of social dialogue has allowed us to apprehend its complexity, it has not said anything about the women and men holding mandates within the staff representative bodies. How many are there? Who are they? What do they do?

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Cases of discrimination against trade unionists are accumulating. This is evidenced by the increasing number of legal proceedings and convictions in many large French companies. This qualitative observation has been reinforced by the statistical results obtained from the 2004 Professional Relations and Company Negotiations (REPONSE) survey, which show that, for equal levels of education and age, union representatives are paid about 10% less than their colleagues, as confirmed here by the 2010 version of the survey. Union membership alone does not explain these lower salaries. It is in fact the union representatives, who are the most active in defending the interests of their colleagues, who are the most penalized. In practice, it is difficult to establish that these employees have lower wages for reasons other than their union responsibilities. The wage penalties for union members without a mandate remain fairly low - around 4% - while conversely, it is in companies where there are disputes that union representatives are most penalised.

Discrimination against women is seen as one of the possible causes behind their underrepresentation in certain STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) subjects. We show that this is not the case for the competitive exams used to recruit almost all French secondary and postsecondary teachers and professors. Comparisons of oral non–gender-blind tests with written gender-blind tests for about 100,000 individuals observed in 11 different fields over the period 2006–2013 reveal a bias in favor of women that is strongly increasing with the extent of a field’s male-domination. This bias turns from 3 to 5 percentile ranks for men in literature and foreign languages to about 10 percentile ranks for women in math, physics, or philosophy. These findings have implications for the debate over what interventions are appropriate to increase the representation of women in fields in which they are currently underrepresented.

This work is part of an agreement between the IPP and the State Secretariat for Women's Rights. It is based on statistical data produced by the Ministry of Labor's Directorate for Research and Statistical Studies (Dares) and the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills in the United Kingdom. Gender segregation between professions and hierarchical positions explains nearly a third of the wage gap in France. By showing that companies that feminize do not become less efficient, this study reverses the stereotype according to which this segregation reflects the fact that certain jobs or functions are better suited to men than to women. Above all, the author highlights the positive "social" effects of feminization of the workplace: increased satisfaction and confidence, improved quality of professional relations, and greater identification with their company

This article identifies the wage premium associated with firm-level union recognition in France. An average premium of 2% is found despite the fact that most workers are already covered by industry-level agreements. To explore the origin of the premium, I construct a simple bargaining model from which I derive three predictions, which are tested empirically using matched employer–employee data. The main prediction is that if intra-firm bargaining is behind the union wage premium, the latter increases with the amount of quasi-rents available in the firms that unions organise. This prediction is validated empirically when firms' market shares are used as a proxy for their rents.

In order to limit the regulation of its activity by the public authorities, the pharmaceutical industry leaves in the shadows, as much as possible, the extent of its promotional efforts. However, we show that drug promotion is one of its core activities. Spending in this area is considerable. It represents at least 20% of the sector's turnover, and the medical sales force accounts for up to 40% of the total workforce of large pharmaceutical companies, which have become marketing giants. But how can this be reconciled with the statements made by many doctors, who refute the influence of promotion on their practices, and the results of econometric studies, which highlight the weak effect of the medical visit? Do large pharmaceutical companies shape the demand in their markets, following the model of the reverse channel, or do they suffer from a rationality problem by investing massively in an activity that is not very profitable? As an alternative to the microeconomic studies whose results we discuss in the light of our ethnographic survey, we propose a macroeconomic approach to the question. The results obtained argue for a strong link between the intensity of the work of medical sales representatives and doctors' prescriptions, which takes the form of an incentive to prescribe the more expensive, newer drugs.

Advertising and innovation are two engines for firms to escape competition and improve profits. We propose a model that encompasses both the static and dynamic interactions between R&D, advertising and competitive environment. It provides three main predictions. First, for a given competitive environment, quality leaders spend more in advertising in order to extract maximal rents. thus, lower costs of ads may favor R&D. Second, the inverted-U relation between competition and R&D still holds with the introduction of advertising. Third, more competition is associated with on average more advertising expenditures. Empirical evidence from a large panel of 59,000 French firms over 1990–2004 supports these three properties.

We investigate the link between how male-dominated a field is, and gender bias against women in this field. Taking the entrance exam of a French higher education institution as a natural experiment, we find that evaluation is actually biased in favor of females in more male-dominated subjects (e.g., math, philosophy) and in favor of males in more female-dominated subjects (e.g., literature, biology), inducing a rebalancing of gender ratios between students recruited for research careers in science and humanities majors. Evaluation bias is identified from systematic variations across subjects in the gap between students' nonanonymous oral and anonymous written test scores.

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Stereotypes and social norms push girls toward literary studies rather than science. The purpose of this IPP note is to examine the extent to which professors are likely to reinforce this self-selection by discriminating against young women who attempt to enter male-dominated disciplines. By using the entrance exam to the École normale supérieure in Paris as a "natural experiment", we show that the opposite phenomenon is actually at work. Discrimination works in favor of girls in traditionally male-dominated subjects (mathematics or philosophy, for example), while it works in favor of boys in subjects deemed more "feminine" (biology or literature), thus slightly reducing the gender segregation between disciplines. The tendency of examiners to discriminate against candidates on the basis of their sex is identified from the differences between the results of anonymous written tests (which neutralize gender discrimination) and oral tests (where the sex of the candidates is known to the examiners). This discrimination goes against gender stereotypes. It is likely to be explained by the fact that examiners are trying to help - consciously or unconsciously - the minority sex in their discipline. These results suggest that girls can enter traditionally male-dominated fields of study without fear of discrimination.

Non-tenured staff represent a significant share of the public sector workforce (about 20% in 2011), a share that has increased over the past two decades. These jobs offer greater flexibility in human resource management in the public sector by adapting to variations in activity and recruiting staff with new skills. Nevertheless, they represent a risk of casualization for a part of the public sector workforce, which explains the repeated efforts to limit the use of non-tenured employment through a restrictive regulatory framework, or even to reduce it through tenure policies. Beyond the opposition between these two logics, this study aims to provide quantified elements that will allow a better understanding of the use of non-permanent staff in the public sector and its recent evolution, in order to develop projections of its future evolution. Three databases were used to analyze the employment of non-regulars. The first, at the center of this project, is the administrative database of the non-tenured civil service scheme, Ircantec. It contains information on the characteristics of jobs and employers for all contribution periods to Ircantec for individuals born in October from 1971 to 2011. This database provides a comprehensive source of information on non-tenured employment that has never before been used for academic research. Data from the 2009 inter-regime sample of contributors (EIC) were also used, and were statistically matched to Ircantec data to obtain an overall view of contributors' careers. Finally, data from the INSEE employment surveys, from 1980 to 2011, were used, providing a more detailed analysis of the characteristics of non-tenured workers and the jobs they hold.

This paper reviews the economic literature on gender segregation by occupation and field of study. In particular, we discuss the reasons that may explain the strong lack of women in science, engineering, computer science or mathematics-related occupations. After recalling how they are legitimate, we finally suggest some potentially effective public interventions to counteract this phenomenon of gender segregation by occupation.

Stereotypes and social norms push girls towards studying the humanities rather than the sciences. The aim of this IPP Note is to examine the extent to which professors are liable to reinforce this self-selection by discriminating against girls who try to enter male-dominated disciplines. Using the competitive entrance exams for the École normale supérieure de Paris as a “natural experiment”, we show that in reality, the reverse phenomenon is at work. Discrimination occurs in favour of girls in the traditionally male-dominated disciplines (mathematics and philosophy, for example), and in favour of boys in the subjects considered the most “feminine” (biology and literature), slightly reducing gender segregation between the disciplines. The tendency of examiners to discriminate on the basis of a candidate’s gender is identified by the differences between the results of anonymous written tests (which neutralise gender discrimination) and oral tests (where the candidate’s sex is known to the examiners). This discrimination goes against gender stereotypes, which is likely to be explained by the fact that examiners try – consciously or not – to help the minority gender in their discipline. The results suggest that girls can follow study paths traditionally reserved for boys, without fear of being discriminated against.

This article presents a first estimate of the wages of union representatives and discusses its possible interpretations. After recalling the French institutional context of company bargaining, we explain the theoretical specificities of the strategic interaction between employers and union representatives during this bargaining. In particular, we discuss the reasons why it may be rational for an employer to discriminate against union representatives. Using employer-employee data and an original econometric strategy, we estimate that, under plausible assumptions, union stewards' wages are on average 10% lower than those of their union and non-union colleagues. Several tests suggest that this wage gap may indeed reflect discrimination against stewards. This interpretation is consistent with how union stewards feel: nearly one in two feel discriminated against, and this proportion varies with their observable characteristics in a similar way to their pay penalty.

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The authors study compensation packages in family- and non-family-owned firms. Using French matched employer-employee data, they first find that family firms pay on average lower wages. Part of this wage gap is due to low-wage workers sorting into family firms and high-wage workers sorting into non-family-owned firms. however, they also find evidence that company wage policies differ according to ownership status, so that the same worker is paid differently under family and non-family firm ownership. In addition, family firms are characterized by lower job insecurity, as measured by lower dismissal rates. Family firms appear to rely less on dismissals, and more on hiring reductions, than do non-family-owned firms when they downsize. Compensating wage differentials account for a substantial part of the inverse relationship between the family/non-family gaps in wages and job security.

This thesis examines the economic impact of unions and family businesses. It begins by examining the effect of union presence on the wage structure of firms. We show that employees in firms with a union representative are paid on average 3% more than their counterparts in firms without unions. These gains increase to about 10% in firms with rents and/or a high proportion of unionized employees. The presence of a union representative also induces a slight wage compression, higher earnings for blue-collar and older workers, and labor force stabilization. We then model employees' decisions to become a shop steward or simply a union member and the strategic interactions between the shop steward and his employer during negotiations. We develop a probabilistic method to decompose the wages of unionized employees according to whether they are stewards or not and find that stewards are paid on average 10% less than their union and non-union colleagues. Numerous tests suggest that this result reflects rational discrimination by employers against stewards. Finally, we show using panel data that wages are 5% lower in family firms. The lower wages reflect for 2% a selection of the least competent employees in family firms. The remaining gap is compensated by better job protection: actual and perceived layoff rates are indeed lower in family firms.