First, in 2016, the TMPG conducted a study of financial benchmarks and uncovered uses of ICAP’s federal funds open rate that had not previously been well understood.2 As ICAP decided to stop publishing the rate, the TMPG also helped to guide market participants to an alternative that is aligned with the International Organizations of Securities Commissions Principles for Financial Benchmarks while steering the market away from the London Interbank Offered Rate (LIBOR) as a potential alternative—a move that now seems prescient given the subsequent news around the long-run risks to LIBOR.
But employers did not respond to this cost differential by substituting male workers with cheaper female workers. Perhaps that was partly because of a (false) social presumption that female workers were less skilled. Occupational segregation also helps prevent substitution between different groups, in this case between the sexes.