A cross cultural comparison of pay differentials as a function of rater's sex and Money Ethic endorsement: the Matthew Effect revisited

Abstract This research extends Tang's [Tang, T. L. P. (1996). Pay differentials as a function of rater's sex, money ethic and job incumbent's sex: a test of the Matthew Effect. Journal of Economic Psychology , 17, 127–144] original study of the Matthew Effect in internal equity to an international setting and examines employees in three countries: Taiwan, the USA and the UK. Results showed that Chinese workers allocated more money to different positions than did their American and British counterparts. Chinese also created a larger pay differential for the top position and smaller pay differentials for the bottom positions than their counterparts. Further, males tended to have a significantly higher top/bottom pay differential (2.44) than females (2.39). For the whole sample, there was a significant difference in pay differentials between male participants with high and low Money Ethic endorsement, supporting the Matthew Effect. This study reveals both culture-specific ( emic ) differences in pay differentials and culture-free ( etic ) findings from all three countries.