published in: Labour Economics, 2005, 12 (1), 125-145
This paper explores the extent to which the gender wage gap is anticipated by workers'
expectations. Data collected among second year students of Bocconi University convey
information about their wage expectations. Detailed controls allow a clean matching with a
sample of Bocconi graduates providing information about their actual wages. The evidence
shows that the gender gap implied by students' expectations one year after graduation is
consistent with the gender gap implied by the earnings of their elder counterparts. There is
instead a misperception of the gender gap later in the career after graduation because
students expect the gender gap to be roughly constant while realizations indicate an
increasing gap with experience, particularly for the relatively less skilled worker. There is also
evidence that the gender gap at the beginning of a career is particularly high in the most
recent cohorts and lower in the previous ones. Finally, our results suggest that the careers of
females are characterized by "glass ceilings" in particular at high skill levels, and by "sticky
floors" at the opposite end of the skill spectrum.
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