Yanqing Zhao
Ph.D Candidate
Job Market Candidate, 2025-2026
Economics
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Fields: Applied Microeconomics, Labor Economics, Education Economics, Law and Economics, Industrial Organization
References: Ben Feigenberg, Ben Ost, Javaeria Qureshi
Job Market Paper: The Price of Knowing: Pay Transparency, Labor Market Tightness, and Aggregate Wage Effects
Abstract: While pay transparency policies have gained popularity as tools to address pay disparities, little is known about their broad effects on average wage levels, and no evidence exists on whether these effects vary with labor market conditions. I develop a novel theoretical framework demonstrating how pay transparency shifts relative bargaining power in favor of firms or workers, depending on the availability of outside options. Exploiting the staggered adoption of the Right of Workers to Talk (ROWTT) laws across U.S. states and applying modern event-study methods, I corroborate these predictions and show that increased pay information sharing among employees raises average wages in tight labor markets, but reduces wages in slack markets. Taken together, these findings reveal previously overlooked tradeoffs essential to a comprehensive cost-benefit analysis of pay transparency policies.