RSSE: Hannah Illing (University of Bonn) Hiring and the Dynamics of the Gender Gap

It is our pleasure that Hannah Illing (University of Bonn) will present on Thursday, April 9, 2026, at 12:45 in room RB437 about the topic “Hiring and the Dynamics of the Gender Gap”.

Registration is not required and anyone who would like to attend is warmly invited.

It is also possible to participate online via MS Teams at this link. In case of any connection issues, please contact lubomir.cingl@vse.cz.

ABSTRACT: We investigate how the same hiring opportunity leads to different labor market outcomes for male and female full-time workers. Using administrative data from Germany spanning 1981 to 2016, we analyze firms’ wage-setting behavior in response to exogenous vacancies caused by sudden worker deaths. By identifying external replacement workers, we compare positions that, ex-ante, are equally likely to hire a male or female worker. Our analysis shows that female replacement workers’ starting wages are, on average, 11 log points lower than those of equally productive male counterparts. This gap is unlikely to be explained by differences in hours, within-firm adjustments, or outside options. Instead, the results suggest that firms may statistically discriminate by gender and that differences in worker bargaining play an important role. The gender hiring opportunity gap is lower in contexts where gender equality norms are stronger. These findings suggest that a significant portion of the gender wage gap originates within firms at the hiring stage, contributing to our understanding of the mechanisms behind persistent gender disparities in wages.

BIO: Hannah Illing is Assistant Professor at the Mercator School of Management, University of Duisburg-Essen. She is a research associate at the Institute for Employment Research (IAB), a Research Fellow at the Institute of Labor Economics (IZA), and a Research Affiliate at ROCKWOOL Foundation Berlin. Her research focuses on labour economics, especially sources of labour market disparities, migration, job displacement, gender wage gaps, and related economic shocks. She has published in leading outlets including Journal of the European Economic Association, Journal of Human Resources. Illing holds a Ph.D. in Economics from the joint graduate programme of the Institute for Employment Research and University of Erlangen-Nuremberg and has held research visits at Boston University and UC Berkeley.