DP15338 Occupational Licensing and the Gender Wage Gap

• Mario Pagliero Maria Koumenta Davud Rostam-Afschar
5 Oct 2020

We use a unique survey of the EU labor force to investigate the relationship between occupational licensing
and the gender wage gap. We find that the gender wage gap is canceled for licensed self-employed workers.
However, this closure of the gender wage gap is not mirrored by significant changes in the gender gap in
hours worked. Our results are robust using decomposition methods, quantile regressions, different datasets,
and selection correction.