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The gender gap in top jobs – The role of overconfidence

Adamecz-Völgyi, A; Shure, N; (2022) The gender gap in top jobs – The role of overconfidence. Labour Economics , 79 , Article 102283. 10.1016/j.labeco.2022.102283. Green open access

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Abstract

There is a large gender gap in the probability of being in a “top job” in mid-career. Top jobs bring higher earnings, and also have more job security and better career trajectories. Recent literature has raised the possibility that some of this gap may be attributable to women not “leaning in” while men are more overconfident in their abilities. We use longitudinal data from childhood into mid-career and construct a measure of overconfidence using multiple measures of objective cognitive ability and subjective estimated ability. Our measure confirms previous findings that men are more overconfident than women. We then use linear regression and decomposition techniques to account for the gender gap in top jobs including our measure of overconfidence. Our results show that men being more overconfident explains 5–11 percent of the gender gap in top job employment. This indicates that while overconfidence matters for gender inequality in the labor market and has implications for how firms recruit and promote workers, other individual, structural, and societal factors play a larger role.

Type: Article
Title: The gender gap in top jobs – The role of overconfidence
Open access status: An open access version is available from UCL Discovery
DOI: 10.1016/j.labeco.2022.102283
Publisher version: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.labeco.2022.102283
Language: English
Additional information: © 2022 The Author(s). Published by Elsevier B.V. under a Creative Commons license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
Keywords: Gender gaps, Inequality, Overconfidence, Labor market
UCL classification: UCL
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Education
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Education > UCL Institute of Education
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Education > UCL Institute of Education > IOE - Social Research Institute
URI: https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10160258
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