The Cost of Salary Negotiation: An Experimental Evaluation with Job Seekers in Thailand | WIP Seminar with Taeho Kim

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The gender pay gap remains a persistent challenge, with a widely-discussed notion suggesting that women tend to negotiate salaries with less assertiveness than men. In response, initiatives have emerged to bolster women's negotiation skills. However, the effectiveness of such initiatives has not been adequately evaluated. To address this gap, Brighton Chotiputsilp and Taeho Kim conducted a field experiment with two interventions: one group received negotiation training coupled with information on prevailing market wages across different professions, while the other group only received the wage information. Their salaries and non-salary benefits were measured 2.5 years later through an obfuscated survey. The negotiation training induced participants to engage in more negotiation, with men and women adopting different strategies. However, the negotiation training appeared to backfire, as those who received it reported earning lower salaries and receiving fewer non-salary benefits compared to the group that received only information. These findings caution against adopting a one-size-fits-all approach to promote negotiation as a solution for pay disparities.

Dr. Taeho Kim is an Assistant Professor at the University of Toronto’s Centre for Industrial Relations and Human Resources. His research focuses on workplace practices, criminal justice, and labour markets. In one stream of his research, he studies the question of how to improve accountability and performance in criminal justice organizations. For example, how do police officers’ on-the-job performance and career decisions respond to changes in promotion incentives? How do oversight measures such as body cameras and civilian complaint investigations affect police behavior? In another stream of his research, he studies various questions in the economics of human resources and labor markets. In one recent project, he studies the gender pay gap and the extent to which salary negotiation skills affect labor market outcomes.

Our CIRHR Work-In-Progress Seminar series allows members of our community to discuss early-stage research. Future guest speakers include:

• Irish pork and the Great Famine
  November 1, Padraic Scanlan, CIRHR Associate Professor
   
• Topic TBD
  November 29, Alejandra González Jiménez, CIRHR Assistant Professor