Salary History and Employer Demand: Evidence from a Two-Sided Audit

We study how salary disclosures affect employer demand using a field experiment featuring hundreds of recruiters and over 2,000 job applications. We randomize the presence of salary questions and the candidates’ disclosures. Employers make negative inferences about non-disclosing candidates, and view salary history as a stronger signal about competing options than worker quality. Disclosures by men (and other highly-paid candidates) yield higher salary offers, but are negative signals of value (net of salary), yielding fewer callbacks. Male wage premiums are regarded as a weaker signal of quality than other wage premiums (such as working at higher paying firms).