Foreign Ownership, Exporting and Gender Wage Gaps: Evidence from Japanese Linked Employer-Employee Data

We explore potential relationships between international economic activities and gender wage gaps (GWGs) using linked employer-employee data for Japan. We find evidence that exporting and multinational activities are associated with reduced GWGs. Domestic-owned firms that neither export nor invest abroad (i.e., domestic-only firms) report the largest GWG, followed by Japanese-owned multinational enterprises (JMNE), then by locally-owned exporters that do not invest abroad and finally by foreign-owned multinational enterprises (FMNE). We separate FMNE by mode of entry and confirm that FMNE established by greenfield investment deviate more than FMNE established by merger and acquisition from domestic-only firms in terms of wages. Greenfield-born FMNE are associated with the smallest GWG and largest gender-neutral wage premium among the firm types. The estimated GWG among Greenfield-born FMNE is almost 12 percentage-points lower than the 26.8 percent prevailing at domestic-only firms.