Wage Transparency and the Gender Pay Gap: A Survey

We survey the small but growing literature on how wage transparency affects the pay gap between men and women in comparable jobs. Pay transparency reforms are implemented in many countries and we categorise these policy reforms according to their content and coverage. Evidence from Denmark, Canada, and UK document that transparency reforms causally reduce the gender wage gap. The main channel is through reducing the growth of male wages and less through increasing female wages. Finally, we discuss implementation costs related to the different categories of policy reforms.