Program > Papers by author > Mirjam Reutter

Overconfidence and Gender Differences in Wage Expectations
Sascha Satlukal  1@  , Stephanie Briel  1@  , Reutter Mirjam  1@  , Gregor Pfeifer  1, 2@  
1 : University of Hohenheim
Schwerzstraße 35 70599 Stuttgart Germany -  Germany
2 : University College of London [London]  (UCL)
Gower Street, London WC1E 6BT -  United Kingdom

We analyze the impact of overconfidence on gender differences in wage expectations using elicited beliefs of German university applicants. Interestingly, female students have lower wage expectations and are less overconfident than their male counterparts. 23 percent of male students expect a higher starting wage than their fellow students. Oaxaca-Blinder decompositions show that a substantial part (7.6 percent) of the gender gap in wage expectations can be explained by stronger overconfidence of males. Applying recentered influence function decompositions, we find that the impact of overconfidence on the gender gap is particularly strong at the bottom and top of the wage expectation distribution.


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