2023-10-19 | How much you wage depends on the workplace composition?

How much your wage depends on the composition of your workplace? Shouldn't it depend just on your skills, human capital and other individual characteristics? 
In fact, not only. 
Matthew Soener, Mirna Safi and me, we study this question in a paper just published  in Sociological Forum: http://doi.org/10.1111/socf.12969

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We estimate the impact of changes in the share of women and migrants in the workplace on individual wage evolutions in France between 2006 and 2015. 
Why migrants and women? Their wages are lower and they could generate competitive pressure (competitive labor market pressure mechanism).
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But they could also increase the internal power of women or migrants in the workplace and rebalance  the wage gap in favor of these groups (power in number mechanism). Finally, cheaper labor generates a wage surplus that could be appropriated not only by shareholders but also by the most powerful employees (surplus appropriation mechanism).
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Here are the results:4/N

We find some evidence of the three mechanisms: 
Increase in the migrant share of workers depresses wages of both native and migrant workers.
Increase in the migrant share of  managers boosts wages of this group and re-balances the native/migrant wage gap among workers. And finally, the increase in the female share of manager generates a wage surplus appropriated by managers, notably male managers. 

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