published in: Industrial Relations, 2006, 45 (3), 416–436
Scientific rhetoric can have a profound impact on the perception of research; it can also drive
and direct further research efforts. What determines whether results are discussed in a
neutral or a judgmental way? How precise and convincing must results be so that authors call
for significant policy changes? These questions are in general difficult to answer, because
rhetoric on the one hand, and content and methodology of the paper on the other, cannot be
separated easily. We, therefore, use a unique example to examine this question empirically:
the analysis of gender wage differentials. Here, the Blinder-Oaxaca decomposition
represents a standard research method that compares male and female earnings, holding
productivity constant. We analyze close to 200 papers to investigate what drives authors to
talk about “discrimination”, whether and when they call for policy activism or when they are
more hesitant to do so. Furthermore, we examine whether the rhetoric used really reveals an
author's prejudice on the topic which may also be reflected in data selection and thereby his
or her findings.
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