The salary taboo privacy norms and the diffusion of information

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Cullen, Zoe; Perez-Truglia, Ricardo
• 署名单位: Harvard University; University of California System; University of California Berkeley
• 刊物名称: JOURNAL OF PUBLIC ECONOMICS
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0047-2727
• DOI: 10.1016/j.jpubeco.2023.104890
• 发表日期: 2023
• 关键词: Information diffusion; Salary; privacy; INEQUALITY; TRANSPARENCY; GENDER

摘要

The diffusion of salary information has implications for labor markets, such as wage discrimination poli-cies and collective bargaining. Access to salary information is believed to be limited and unequal, but there is little direct evidence on the sources of these information frictions. Social scientists have long con-jectured that privacy norms around salary (i.e., the salary taboo) play an important role. We provide unique evidence of this phenomenon based on a field experiment with 755 employees at a large commer-cial bank in Southeast Asia. We show that many of its employees are both unwilling to reveal their sal-aries to coworkers and reluctant to ask coworkers about their salaries. These frictions persist, in smaller magnitude, when sharing less sensitive information on seniority. We discuss implications for pay trans-parency policies and the gender wage gap.CO 2023 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.