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American Economic Review Vol. 116 No. 3 2026

Equal Pay for Similar Work

Diego Gentile Passaro1; Fuhito Kojima2; Bobak Pakzad-Hurson3

1 Amazon Science (email: ) · 2 Department of Economics, University of Tokyo (email: ) · 3 Department of Economics, Brown University (email: )

Abstract

Equal pay laws increasingly require that workers with different group identities doing “similar” work are paid equal wages within firm. We study such “equal pay for similar work” (EPSW) policies theoretically and test our models’ predictions empirically using evidence from a 2009 gender-based Chilean EPSW. Under EPSW, firms segregate their workforce by gender. When there are more men than women in a labor market, EPSW increases the gender wage gap.

DOI
10.1257/aer.20230832
Volume
116
Issue
3
Pages
977-1013
Language
en
Sources
openalex crossref

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