Paper title and abstract

Pay Transparency and mental health

Abstract: This paper explores the impact of pay transparency on worker well-being. We exploit a pay transparency legislation in Denmark that required firms with more than 35 employees to disclose pay information by gender and use detailed employee mental health prescription data to measure well-being. Our results suggest that pay transparency led to a short-run decline in anti-depressant use for women in affected firms with no effect on men. We consider two competing mechanisms behind this result: the impact of horizontal (peer) comparisons and the effect of organizational changes leading to the reduction of pay disparity. Our results provide evidence in support of the latter mechanism.

About Daniel Wolfenzon

Daniel Wolfenzon is the Stefan H. Robock Professor of Finance and Economics at Columbia Business School and the Erling Persson Visiting Professor at the Swedish House of Finance and the House of Innovation at the Stockholm School of Economics. He received a Masters and a PhD in economics from Harvard University and holds a BS in economics and a BS in mechanical engineering from MIT. Professor Wolfenzon previously taught at the University of Michigan, the University of Chicago and NYU. He is also a Faculty Research Fellow at the National Bureau of Economic Research.

His research interests are in corporate finance and organizational economics. He has studied control sharing in small firms, the effects of investor protection on ownership concentration, and the structure of business groups around the world. His most recent research focuses on family firms. He has examined the consequences of family succession on firm performance and also the importance of managerial talent in family controlled firms. His work has been published in top economic and finance journals such as the Quarterly Journal of Economics, the Review of Economic Studies, the Journal of Finance, and the Journal of Financial Economics. Professor Wolfenzon received the Jensen Prize (second place) for best paper on corporate finance and organizations published in the Journal of Financial Economics both in 2002 and 2005.

This seminar represented an integrative and important part of the House of Innovation's strategy to build a research environment through engagement with prominent guests and their work.

This seminar was a collaboration between the Swedish House of Finance and the House of Innovation.