Salary history and employer demand by Amanda Agan, Bo Cowgill, Laura Gee published by VOXEU (1/2022).
Salary history bans are increasingly popular in the US. Using a field experiment to investigate how salary history disclosures impact employer demand, this column finds that disclosing a high salary is often a signal of quality and yields higher salary offers. However, higher salaries can also make candidates too expensive to justify a callback. The authors find evidence that such policies can equalise some outcomes across genders, but sometimes as a result of reductions for men rather than raises for women.
