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SeedPublished 2026-10-23

Pay transparency laws and the gender pay gap

The gender pay gap appears on 55 recent papers, mostly in economics, while pay transparency appears on 2. The EU pay transparency directive takes effect in 2026, and several US states now require salary ranges in job postings. Does transparency narrow the gap, compress pay, or move it into bonuses?

accountingeconomicslabor

What prompted this#

Since October 2025, 65 papers carry a gender-pay-gap, pay-gap or pay-transparency keyword (53 in economics journals): "gender pay gap" on 55, "executive-employee pay gap" on 6, "pay transparency" on 2. The policy is arriving faster than the research.

Questions#

  • After salary ranges became mandatory in job postings, did posted ranges narrow, did firms post wider ranges to say nothing, and did the gender gap among new hires change?
  • Under the EU directive's reporting and pay-audit rules, do firms with large gaps raise women's pay, slow men's pay growth or restructure jobs?
  • Do transparency rules reduce individual bargaining, and does that help or hurt the workers who bargained least?

Data that could help#

Job postings with salary ranges (Lightcast), firm pay gap reports (UK and EU), and linked employer-employee data.

Next step#

Compare the gender gap in starting pay for jobs posted in US states with and without salary range laws, before and after each law.

The keywords this note follows, in the tracked finance, accounting, economics, management, operations research and AI journals as of 2026-10-26
KeywordPapers, last 30 daysRankPapers per month, Oct 23 – Oct 26*Papers, last 36 months
gender pay gap2#1303152
pay transparency0–11

Markdown version of this note: /ideas/pay-transparency-laws.md

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Cite this page

Scholar4AI. (2026). Pay transparency laws and the gender pay gap. Journal Research Rankings. Retrieved October 23, 2026, from https://scholar4ai.com/ideas/pay-transparency-laws

@misc{scholar4ai-ideas-pay-transparency-laws,
  author = {{Scholar4AI}},
  title = {Pay transparency laws and the gender pay gap},
  year = {2026},
  howpublished = {\url{https://scholar4ai.com/ideas/pay-transparency-laws}},
  urldate = {2026-10-23},
  note = {Journal Research Rankings; data from OpenAlex (CC0); licensed CC BY-NC 4.0}
}

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