Product market competition and gender discrimination

This paper presents novel empirical evidence for the prediction from Becker’s (1957) classical theory, that competition drives discrimination out of the market. We use a comprehensive business registration reform in Portugal as a quasi-natural experiment to study the effect of increased product market competition on gender discrimination. We use employer-employee data for the universe of private sector firms and workers, and exploit the staggered implementation of the reform across municipalities for identification. Increased competition following the reform increases growth of the female employment share and reduces the gender pay gap for middle-managers and for medium- and high-skilled workers but not for top-managers or the unskilled. We also find that discriminatory employers, approximated by a low female employment share, are more likely to exit and those that survive reduce overall employment growth following the reform, while non-discriminatory employers grow faster. Existing evidence has shown that gender discrimination reduces output; our findings suggest that entry deregulation can contribute to reduce inefficiencies arising from gender discrimination.
The brief study that we will present below is part of a wider research on the toy book — an investigation 0 Lugar do livro-brinquedo »a infancia: arquitetura, (inter)texturas e outros desafios (provisional title) which we have been carrying out in the scope of the PhD course in Children's Studies in the specialty of Literature for Children, at the Institute of Education, at the University of Minho. Aiming at reflecting upon the main verbal-iconic singularities of the puppet books for small readers, we will take as theoric frameworks concepts and subjects of the domains of Literary Studies, History, Analysis and Textual Hermeneutics. We will proceed to the reading and investigation of these works, using textual analysis techniques, in order to conclude about the most relevant strategies (verbal and illustrative) and/or rhetorical-stylistic mechanisms of puppet books. Although this study has an embryonic character, we consider that it is based on novelty and pertinence, given the lack of academic research focused exclusively on the approach to the problems announced, in particular the History and the singularities of the aesthetic object in question. For the realization of our theoretical-analytical reflection, we set as an exemplary textual corpus of this study a set of contemporary works — all published in the XXI century — listed here by chronological order, by foreign authorship, namely, See you later, Alligator! by Annie Kubler (Child's Play, 2004), A Very hungry Caterpillar's Finger Puppet Book, by Eric Carle (Puffin Books, 2010), Hello Spot! A Puppet Play Book, by Eric Hill (Frederick Warne, 2012), Little Mouse Finger Puppet Book, illustrated by Klaartje van der Put (Chronicle Books, 2015), One More Tickle! by Sam McBratney (Walker Books, 2016), as well as of others available in the national book market, Patinho Bisnaga and Sapinho Bisnaga, both illustrated by Laila Hills (Babel, 2012). We have added to this a collection, with Portuguese translation, edited by Porto Editora, in 2006, which includes the following titles: A Gata Gabriela, A Rã Raquel, 0 Pássaro Pascoal, and O rato Rafael. The authors are grateful to two anonymous referees for valuable comments that contributed to improve the paper. They also thank seminar participants at Bristol, participants at the ESPE 2018 conference and at the GEE/Nova Lisbon Competition conference for suggestions. Data access from the Portuguese Ministry of Labor and Social Solidarity and the Office for National Statistics (INE) are gratefully acknowledged. The research was partially funded by COMPETE (POCI-01-0145-FEDER-006683), the FCT/MEC, and ERDF through COMPETE 2020.
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