Does information disclosure affect the gender gap in bidding behavior? Empirical evidence from a natural experiment on a large online labor platform
利用全球最大在线劳动平台之一的信息披露外生变化，研究雇主支付意愿和所需经验水平的信息披露如何影响男女竞标行为的性别差距，发现女性在更多信息下出价更低，且性别工资差距主要由工资预期差异驱动。
Exploiting an exogenous change in information disclosure on one of the largest online labor platforms worldwide, we assess how the provision of more information on the employers’ willingness to pay (WTP) and the required experience level of workers affects the gender gap in bidding behavior. We find that female workers make lower wage proposals than male workers if the employers’ WTP for a project, as given by its budget, is disclosed in addition to the (exogenously enforced) experience level of workers that employers deem necessary for the job, i.e., low, intermediate, or high. In addition, we do not find robust empirical support for the hypothesis that female workers’ under-confidence in their skills increases the gender gap in bidding behavior. Finally, we find a statistically significant gender wage gap of 16.8%, which is reduced to 1.5% when we control for employer, worker, and project characteristics. Once we include workers’ wage proposals in our agreed-upon wage regressions, the gender wage gap virtually disappears (0.2%) and is statistically insignificant. This suggests that gender differences in wage expectations pertain to gender differences in wages.