Two tales of contraction : gender wage gap in Georgia before and after the 2008 crisis

This paper examines the contraction in the gender wage gap in Georgia between 2004 and 2011. Behind the continuous decline at the mean lies a change in the shape of the gender wage gap across the wage distribution before and after the 2008 crisis. Before the crisis, the growth in state sector wages and the expansion of construction and transport industries contributed to these developments. After the crisis, it was the contraction of male-dominated industries and potentially the female added-worker effect. In the analysis, we employ the decomposition approaches proposed in Firpo et al. (Decomposing wage distributions using influence function projections, 2007) and Ñopo (The Rev of Econ and Stat 90:290–299, 2008).