There is a new paper coming out: "Discrimination in the laboratory: A meta-analysis of economics experiments," by Tom Lane in the European Economic Review.
The abstract reads:
"Economists are increasingly using experiments to study and measure discrimination between groups. In a meta-analysis containing 441 results from 77 studies, we find groups significantly discriminate against each other in roughly a third of cases. Discrimination varies depending upon the type of group identity being studied: it is stronger when identity is artificially induced in the laboratory than when the subject pool is divided by ethnicity or nationality, and higher still when participants are split into socially or geographically distinct groups. In gender discrimination experiments, there is significant favouritism towards the opposite gender. There is evidence for both taste-based and statistical discrimination; tastes drive the general pattern of discrimination against out-groups, but statistical beliefs are found to affect discrimination in specific instances. Relative to all other decision-making contexts, discrimination is much stronger when participants are asked to allocate payoffs between passive in-group and out-group members. Students and non-students appear to discriminate equally. We discuss possible interpretations and implications of our findings."
Thanks Christine Exley who pointed this paper out to me.
Monday, February 22, 2016
Wednesday, February 17, 2016
Overrated Men
Josh Logue writes at insidehighereducation, about "Overrated Men Do the biology students celebrated (perhaps undeservingly) for their intellect always seem to be male? A new study says the answer lies in gender bias." on February 12, 2016
"Male students appear to consistently and significantly overrate the abilities of other male students, whereas female students showed no such bias, according to a new study in the journalPLoS ONE."
"Researchers at the University of Washington surveyed more than 1,700 students in three introductory biology classes, asking them to nominate those who they felt were doing exceptionally well in the class. Even after controlling for outspokenness and actual graded performance, male students in each of the classes consistently overestimated the performance of other men to the tune of an assumed 0.765 bump in grade point average. Effectively, for an outspoken female student to be nominated at the same rate as an outspoken man, her class GPA would need to be three quarters of a point higher than that of the guys.
Female students, on the other hand, demonstrated no statistically significant bias. Researchers found they were equally likely to nominate male and female students with equivalent GPAs."
The paper is called " Males Under-Estimate Academic Performance of Their Female Peers in Undergraduate Biology Classrooms", by Daniel Z. Grunspan , Sarah L. Eddy , Sara E. Brownell, Benjamin L. Wiggins, Alison J. Crowe, Steven M. Goodreau
Published: February 10, 2016
Here is the abstract:
"Women who start college in one of the natural or physical sciences leave in greater proportions than their male peers. The reasons for this difference are complex, and one possible contributing factor is the social environment women experience in the classroom. Using social network analysis, we explore how gender influences the confidence that college-level biology students have in each other’s mastery of biology. Results reveal that males are more likely than females to be named by peers as being knowledgeable about the course content. This effect increases as the term progresses, and persists even after controlling for class performance and outspokenness. The bias in nominations is specifically due to males over-nominating their male peers relative to their performance. The over-nomination of male peers is commensurate with an overestimation of male grades by 0.57 points on a 4 point grade scale, indicating a strong male bias among males when assessing their classmates. Females, in contrast, nominated equitably based on student performance rather than gender, suggesting they lacked gender biases in filling out these surveys. These trends persist across eleven surveys taken in three different iterations of the same Biology course. In every class, the most renowned students are always male. This favoring of males by peers could influence student self-confidence, and thus persistence in this STEM discipline."
"Male students appear to consistently and significantly overrate the abilities of other male students, whereas female students showed no such bias, according to a new study in the journalPLoS ONE."
"Researchers at the University of Washington surveyed more than 1,700 students in three introductory biology classes, asking them to nominate those who they felt were doing exceptionally well in the class. Even after controlling for outspokenness and actual graded performance, male students in each of the classes consistently overestimated the performance of other men to the tune of an assumed 0.765 bump in grade point average. Effectively, for an outspoken female student to be nominated at the same rate as an outspoken man, her class GPA would need to be three quarters of a point higher than that of the guys.
Female students, on the other hand, demonstrated no statistically significant bias. Researchers found they were equally likely to nominate male and female students with equivalent GPAs."
The paper is called " Males Under-Estimate Academic Performance of Their Female Peers in Undergraduate Biology Classrooms", by Daniel Z. Grunspan , Sarah L. Eddy , Sara E. Brownell, Benjamin L. Wiggins, Alison J. Crowe, Steven M. Goodreau
Published: February 10, 2016
Here is the abstract:
"Women who start college in one of the natural or physical sciences leave in greater proportions than their male peers. The reasons for this difference are complex, and one possible contributing factor is the social environment women experience in the classroom. Using social network analysis, we explore how gender influences the confidence that college-level biology students have in each other’s mastery of biology. Results reveal that males are more likely than females to be named by peers as being knowledgeable about the course content. This effect increases as the term progresses, and persists even after controlling for class performance and outspokenness. The bias in nominations is specifically due to males over-nominating their male peers relative to their performance. The over-nomination of male peers is commensurate with an overestimation of male grades by 0.57 points on a 4 point grade scale, indicating a strong male bias among males when assessing their classmates. Females, in contrast, nominated equitably based on student performance rather than gender, suggesting they lacked gender biases in filling out these surveys. These trends persist across eleven surveys taken in three different iterations of the same Biology course. In every class, the most renowned students are always male. This favoring of males by peers could influence student self-confidence, and thus persistence in this STEM discipline."
Tuesday, February 16, 2016
Financial Incentives to Increase Physical Activity Among Overweight and Obese Adults
"Framing Financial Incentives to Increase Physical Activity Among Overweight and Obese Adults: A Randomized, Controlled Trial" published online, Annals of Internal Medicine
Mitesh S. Patel, MD, MBA, MS; David A. Asch MD, MBA; Roy Rosin, MBA; Dylan S. Small, PhD; Scarlett L. Bellamy, ScD; Jack Heuer, EdD; Susan Sproat, MS; Chris Hyson, MEd; Nancy Haff, MD; Samantha M. Lee, MD; Lisa Wesby, MS; Karen Hoffer, BS; David Shuttleworth, MS; Devon H. Taylor, BS; Victoria Hilbert, MPH, RD; Jingsan Zhu, MBA, MS; Lin Yang, MS; Xingmei Wang, MS; and Kevin G. Volpp, MD, PhD
Here is the abstract - or what counts as abstract in medical journals:
"Background: Financial incentive designs to increase physical activity have not been well-examined.
Objective: To test the effectiveness of 3 methods to frame financial incentives to increase physical activity among overweight and obese adults.
Design: Randomized, controlled trial. (ClinicalTrials.gov: NCT 02030119)
Setting: University of Pennsylvania.
Participants: 281 adult employees (body mass index ≥27 kg/m2).
Intervention: 13-week intervention. Participants had a goal of 7000 steps per day and were randomly assigned to a control group with daily feedback or 1 of 3 financial incentive programs with daily feedback: a gain incentive ($1.40 given each day the goal was achieved), lottery incentive (daily eligibility [expected value approximately $1.40] if goal was achieved), or loss incentive ($42 allocated monthly upfront and $1.40 removed each day the goal was not achieved). Participants were followed for another 13 weeks with daily performance feedback but no incentives.
Measurements: Primary outcome was the mean proportion of participant-days that the 7000-step goal was achieved during intervention. Secondary outcomes included mean proportion of participant-days achieving the goal during follow-up and mean daily steps during intervention and follow-up.
Results: The mean proportion of participant-days achieving the goal was 0.30 (95% CI, 0.22 to 0.37) in the control group, 0.35 (CI, 0.28 to 0.42) in the gain-incentive group, 0.36 (CI, 0.29 to 0.43) in the lottery-incentive group, and 0.45 (CI, 0.38 to 0.52) in the loss-incentive group. In adjusted analyses, only the loss-incentive group had a significantly greater mean proportion of participant-days achieving the goal than control (adjusted difference, 0.16 [CI, 0.06 to 0.26]; P = 0.001), but the adjusted difference in mean daily steps was not significant (861 [CI, 24 to 1746]; P = 0.056). During follow-up, daily steps decreased for all incentive groups and were not different from control.
Limitation: Single employer.
Conclusion: Financial incentives framed as a loss were most effective for achieving physical activity goals.
Primary Funding Source: National Institute on Aging."
Here is a write up by medpage today.
"There's plenty of previous research on the behavioral economics concept of loss aversion, or people's tendency to prefer avoiding losses to getting gains. In an interview with MedPage Today, co-author Mitesh Patel, MD, MBA, also at UPenn, said that the results were in line with what they were expecting.
But he added that this study was the first to test the loss aversion principle in a prospective study of employees with physical activity as an outcome."
Here is a figure from a write up by UPenn
Mitesh S. Patel, MD, MBA, MS; David A. Asch MD, MBA; Roy Rosin, MBA; Dylan S. Small, PhD; Scarlett L. Bellamy, ScD; Jack Heuer, EdD; Susan Sproat, MS; Chris Hyson, MEd; Nancy Haff, MD; Samantha M. Lee, MD; Lisa Wesby, MS; Karen Hoffer, BS; David Shuttleworth, MS; Devon H. Taylor, BS; Victoria Hilbert, MPH, RD; Jingsan Zhu, MBA, MS; Lin Yang, MS; Xingmei Wang, MS; and Kevin G. Volpp, MD, PhD
Here is the abstract - or what counts as abstract in medical journals:
"Background: Financial incentive designs to increase physical activity have not been well-examined.
Objective: To test the effectiveness of 3 methods to frame financial incentives to increase physical activity among overweight and obese adults.
Design: Randomized, controlled trial. (ClinicalTrials.gov: NCT 02030119)
Setting: University of Pennsylvania.
Participants: 281 adult employees (body mass index ≥27 kg/m2).
Intervention: 13-week intervention. Participants had a goal of 7000 steps per day and were randomly assigned to a control group with daily feedback or 1 of 3 financial incentive programs with daily feedback: a gain incentive ($1.40 given each day the goal was achieved), lottery incentive (daily eligibility [expected value approximately $1.40] if goal was achieved), or loss incentive ($42 allocated monthly upfront and $1.40 removed each day the goal was not achieved). Participants were followed for another 13 weeks with daily performance feedback but no incentives.
Measurements: Primary outcome was the mean proportion of participant-days that the 7000-step goal was achieved during intervention. Secondary outcomes included mean proportion of participant-days achieving the goal during follow-up and mean daily steps during intervention and follow-up.
Results: The mean proportion of participant-days achieving the goal was 0.30 (95% CI, 0.22 to 0.37) in the control group, 0.35 (CI, 0.28 to 0.42) in the gain-incentive group, 0.36 (CI, 0.29 to 0.43) in the lottery-incentive group, and 0.45 (CI, 0.38 to 0.52) in the loss-incentive group. In adjusted analyses, only the loss-incentive group had a significantly greater mean proportion of participant-days achieving the goal than control (adjusted difference, 0.16 [CI, 0.06 to 0.26]; P = 0.001), but the adjusted difference in mean daily steps was not significant (861 [CI, 24 to 1746]; P = 0.056). During follow-up, daily steps decreased for all incentive groups and were not different from control.
Limitation: Single employer.
Conclusion: Financial incentives framed as a loss were most effective for achieving physical activity goals.
Primary Funding Source: National Institute on Aging."
Here is a write up by medpage today.
"There's plenty of previous research on the behavioral economics concept of loss aversion, or people's tendency to prefer avoiding losses to getting gains. In an interview with MedPage Today, co-author Mitesh Patel, MD, MBA, also at UPenn, said that the results were in line with what they were expecting.
But he added that this study was the first to test the loss aversion principle in a prospective study of employees with physical activity as an outcome."
Here is a figure from a write up by UPenn
Friday, February 12, 2016
Wanted in China: More Male Teachers, to Make Boys Men
A NYtimes article "Wanted in China: More Male Teachers, to Make Boys Men
By JAVIER C. HERNÁNDEZFEB. 6, 2016"
starts like that:
"FUZHOU, China — The history class began with a lesson on being manly.
Lin Wei, 27, one of a handful of male sixth-grade teachers at a primary school here, has made a habit of telling stories about warlords who threw witches into rivers and soldiers who outsmarted Japanese troops. “Men have special duties,” he said. “They have to be brave, protect women and take responsibility for wrongdoing.”
Worried that a shortage of male teachers has produced a generation of timid, self-centered and effeminate boys, Chinese educators are working to reinforce traditional gender roles and values in the classroom.
and then there is
"Zhou Jiahao, 18, a senior at the school, said he did not think China faced a masculinity crisis in its classrooms. But he said boys felt more confident when they took classes together. The school offers courses in etiquette, coding and wilderness survival, among others.
“In classes with female students, we might not dare speak out,” he said. “When it’s just boys, we feel much freer.”"
This of course is not exactly what we seem to see in studies in US colleges, see my older blogpost on Women don't speak up! here
Thanks to David Yang
By JAVIER C. HERNÁNDEZFEB. 6, 2016"
starts like that:
"FUZHOU, China — The history class began with a lesson on being manly.
Lin Wei, 27, one of a handful of male sixth-grade teachers at a primary school here, has made a habit of telling stories about warlords who threw witches into rivers and soldiers who outsmarted Japanese troops. “Men have special duties,” he said. “They have to be brave, protect women and take responsibility for wrongdoing.”
Worried that a shortage of male teachers has produced a generation of timid, self-centered and effeminate boys, Chinese educators are working to reinforce traditional gender roles and values in the classroom.
and then there is
"Zhou Jiahao, 18, a senior at the school, said he did not think China faced a masculinity crisis in its classrooms. But he said boys felt more confident when they took classes together. The school offers courses in etiquette, coding and wilderness survival, among others.
“In classes with female students, we might not dare speak out,” he said. “When it’s just boys, we feel much freer.”"
This of course is not exactly what we seem to see in studies in US colleges, see my older blogpost on Women don't speak up! here
Thanks to David Yang
Wednesday, February 10, 2016
Immigrants and Gender Roles: Assimilation vs. Culture
Les Picker at the NBER digest writes about a paper by Francine D. Blau
"Immigrants and Gender Roles: Assimilation vs. Culture"
The abstract reads:
"This paper examines evidence on the role of assimilation versus source country culture in influencing immigrant women’s behavior in the United States—looking both over time with immigrants’ residence in the United States and across immigrant generations. It focuses particularly on labor supply but, for the second generation, also examines fertility and education. We find considerable evidence that immigrant source country gender roles influence immigrant and second generation women’s behavior in the United States. This conclusion is robust to various efforts to rule out the effect of other unobservables and to distinguish the effect of culture from that of social capital. These results support a growing literature that suggests that culture matters for economic behavior. At the same time, the results suggest considerable evidence of assimilation of immigrants. Immigrant women narrow the labor supply gap with native-born women with time in the United States, and, while our results suggest an important role for intergenerational transmission, they also indicate considerable convergence of immigrants to native levels of schooling, fertility, and labor supply across generations."
Les Picker writes about that paper:
"Source country gender roles influence immigrants' behavior in the United States, even among second-generation women, but assimilation also occurs.
Immigrants are an increasing presence in the United States. The share of the foreign-born in the population grew from 4.8 percent in 1970 to 12.9 percent in 2012, and the share of U.S. children who were immigrants themselves or who had at least one immigrant parent increased from 13 percent in 1990 to 23 percent in 2008.
Along with the rise in immigrant population has come a shift in the predominant origins of immigrants. The principal source of immigrants has shifted from countries in Europe, with cultures that are broadly similar to that of the United States, to regions with very different cultures and traditions. How much does an immigrant's source country affect their adjustment to American life? What role does assimilation play in that adjustment? Do differences between immigrants and natives in labor supply, education, and fertility carry over to the second generation, or do second generation women fully assimilate to native patterns?
In Immigrants and Gender Roles: Assimilation vs. Culture (NBER Working Paper No. 21756), Francine D. Blau reports on a research program with Lawrence M. Kahn that examines the roles of assimilation and source country culture as influences on immigrant women's behavior. The research focuses in particular on labor supply because immigrants increasingly come from countries that have a more gender-based division of labor than is currently the case in the United States. Typically, the source countries have lower female labor force participation rates and higher fertility rates than the United States. There has been a growing gap between the labor supply of native and immigrant women in the U.S. since 1980.
The researchers find considerable evidence that source country gender roles influence immigrants' behavior. This influence appears to extend to second-generation women. At the same time, they also find evidence of assimilation. Immigrant women narrow the labor supply gap with native-born women as they spend more time in the United States. There is also considerable convergence of immigrants to native levels of schooling, fertility, and labor supply across generations. For second-generation women, fertility and labor supply in their mother's source country have a larger association with their behavior than the corresponding practices in their father's source country.
Blau points out that in the future, immigrant source countries may become more similar to the United States, thus reducing the effect of source country gender roles on the behavior of first- and second-generation immigrant women. This has already begun to happen with respect to fertility. The fertility of immigrant women relative to natives has been falling rapidly in the most recent immigrant cohorts."
"Immigrants and Gender Roles: Assimilation vs. Culture"
The abstract reads:
"This paper examines evidence on the role of assimilation versus source country culture in influencing immigrant women’s behavior in the United States—looking both over time with immigrants’ residence in the United States and across immigrant generations. It focuses particularly on labor supply but, for the second generation, also examines fertility and education. We find considerable evidence that immigrant source country gender roles influence immigrant and second generation women’s behavior in the United States. This conclusion is robust to various efforts to rule out the effect of other unobservables and to distinguish the effect of culture from that of social capital. These results support a growing literature that suggests that culture matters for economic behavior. At the same time, the results suggest considerable evidence of assimilation of immigrants. Immigrant women narrow the labor supply gap with native-born women with time in the United States, and, while our results suggest an important role for intergenerational transmission, they also indicate considerable convergence of immigrants to native levels of schooling, fertility, and labor supply across generations."
Les Picker writes about that paper:
"Source country gender roles influence immigrants' behavior in the United States, even among second-generation women, but assimilation also occurs.
Immigrants are an increasing presence in the United States. The share of the foreign-born in the population grew from 4.8 percent in 1970 to 12.9 percent in 2012, and the share of U.S. children who were immigrants themselves or who had at least one immigrant parent increased from 13 percent in 1990 to 23 percent in 2008.
Along with the rise in immigrant population has come a shift in the predominant origins of immigrants. The principal source of immigrants has shifted from countries in Europe, with cultures that are broadly similar to that of the United States, to regions with very different cultures and traditions. How much does an immigrant's source country affect their adjustment to American life? What role does assimilation play in that adjustment? Do differences between immigrants and natives in labor supply, education, and fertility carry over to the second generation, or do second generation women fully assimilate to native patterns?
In Immigrants and Gender Roles: Assimilation vs. Culture (NBER Working Paper No. 21756), Francine D. Blau reports on a research program with Lawrence M. Kahn that examines the roles of assimilation and source country culture as influences on immigrant women's behavior. The research focuses in particular on labor supply because immigrants increasingly come from countries that have a more gender-based division of labor than is currently the case in the United States. Typically, the source countries have lower female labor force participation rates and higher fertility rates than the United States. There has been a growing gap between the labor supply of native and immigrant women in the U.S. since 1980.
The researchers find considerable evidence that source country gender roles influence immigrants' behavior. This influence appears to extend to second-generation women. At the same time, they also find evidence of assimilation. Immigrant women narrow the labor supply gap with native-born women as they spend more time in the United States. There is also considerable convergence of immigrants to native levels of schooling, fertility, and labor supply across generations. For second-generation women, fertility and labor supply in their mother's source country have a larger association with their behavior than the corresponding practices in their father's source country.
Blau points out that in the future, immigrant source countries may become more similar to the United States, thus reducing the effect of source country gender roles on the behavior of first- and second-generation immigrant women. This has already begun to happen with respect to fertility. The fertility of immigrant women relative to natives has been falling rapidly in the most recent immigrant cohorts."
Tuesday, February 9, 2016
How Economists Would Fix Online Dating
My work with Soo Lee on roses was mentioned in a Wall Street Journal article By CHRISTOPHER MIMS on Feb. 8, 2016
How Economists Would Fix Online Dating
A ‘thick’ market and cost-benefit analysis help avoid ‘romantic unemployment’
"One recent experiment in improving online dating sites through signaling mechanisms, conducted by economists Soohyung Lee and Muriel Niederle, gave members of a Korean dating site a limited number of virtual roses, meant to indicate special interest in a person, to include with their messages to potential matches. The result was that people were more likely to respond to those who sent them a rose..."
I think here is a version open to everyone
How Economists Would Fix Online Dating
A ‘thick’ market and cost-benefit analysis help avoid ‘romantic unemployment’
"One recent experiment in improving online dating sites through signaling mechanisms, conducted by economists Soohyung Lee and Muriel Niederle, gave members of a Korean dating site a limited number of virtual roses, meant to indicate special interest in a person, to include with their messages to potential matches. The result was that people were more likely to respond to those who sent them a rose..."
I think here is a version open to everyone
Monday, February 8, 2016
Competitiveness and Wages of MBA's
This is a paper I always wanted to write:
Reuben, E., P. Sapienza, and L. Zingales: "Taste for competition and the gender gap among young business professionals,"
There are two reasons I find this work interesting: First, it related to a literature that helps understand what psychological traits are linked to labor market outcomes. Second, it shows the external relevance of competitiveness: see also my paper with Thomas Buser and Hessel Oosterbeek: “Gender, Competitiveness and Career Choices,” Quarterly Journal of Economics, August 2014, 129 (3): 1409-1447, and see also my former blogposts here and here)
The abstract reads:
"Using an incentivized measure of individuals’ taste for competition, this paper investigates whether this taste explains subsequent gender differences in earnings and industry choice in a sample of high ability MBA graduates. We find that “competitive” individuals earn 9% more than their less competitive counterparts do. Moreover, gender differences in taste for competition explain around 10% of the overall gender gap. We also find that competitive individuals are more likely to work in high-paying industries nine years later, which suggests that the relation between taste for competition and earnings persists in the long run. Lastly, we find that the effect of taste for competition emerges over time when MBAs and firms interact with each other."
Their main results can be seen in the following figures and tables:
First even among MBA's it seems there is a gender gap in tournament entry.
While risk aversion and confidence can account for some of that gender gap in tournament entry, a substantial gender gap remains.
Second, male MBA's have a higher salary after graduation than female MBA's.
Now, to assess the external relevance of competitiveness:
Competitiveness is highly positively correlated with higher earnings.
Finally, competitiveness remains an important variable even controlling for gender, and can account for about 10% of the gender gap in earnings.
They write:
"How important is the role of taste for competition in accounting for the gender gap in earnings? One way to answer this question is to compare the impact of taste for competition on the gender coefficient to the impact of other control variables on the same coefficient. This can be done by looking at column III, which includes all the variables in Table 1 except for the choice of tournament. Including these control variables noticeability reduces the gender gap by 20.7% (the gender coefficient changes from–0.122 to –0.097). This result puts the effect of taste for competition in perspective. Namely, the single experimental measure of taste for competition explains around half as much of the gender gap in earnings as a rich set of variables that include demographic characteristics, academic performance, and experimental and survey measures of important psychological attributes."
Finally, they have a great section to address to what extent competitiveness is really distinct from risk aversion: They write the following:
"Taste for competition and the choice of tournament
A clever feature of the experimental design of Niederle and Vesterlund (2007) is that participants make two choices between tournament and piece-rate. In one case, participants perform under the chosen payment scheme while in the other case the payment scheme is simply applied to their past performance (see section 3.1). We will refer to the choice of the tournament in the latter case as “uncompetitive tournament choice.” Because it does not include performing in a competitive environment, Niederle and Vesterlund (2007) argue that the choice between piece-rate and uncompetitive tournament is unaffected by the participants’ attitudes towards competition. If this is the case and the association between earnings and choosing the tournament is driven by taste for competition, then we should observe a weaker relation between earnings and uncompetitive tournament.
To evaluate whether choosing uncompetitive tournament is associated with earnings, we run regressions like the ones reported in columns II and IV of Table 3. In some regressions, we simply substitute tournament with uncompetitive tournament. We find that the coefficients for uncompetitive tournament are positive, but they are not statistically significant and they are half as large as the comparable coefficient in Table 3. In addition, the change in the gender coefficient due to the inclusion of uncompetitive tournament is much smaller and is not statistically significant. In other regressions, we include both tournament and uncompetitive tournament. We find that the coefficient for tournament is both economically and statistically significant whereas the coefficient for uncompetitive tournament is close to zero and far from statistical significance. These results provide compelling evidence that the association between tournament and earnings is indeed driven by the participants’ attitudes towards competition and is not related to the choice of a tournament per se."
Reuben, E., P. Sapienza, and L. Zingales: "Taste for competition and the gender gap among young business professionals,"
There are two reasons I find this work interesting: First, it related to a literature that helps understand what psychological traits are linked to labor market outcomes. Second, it shows the external relevance of competitiveness: see also my paper with Thomas Buser and Hessel Oosterbeek: “Gender, Competitiveness and Career Choices,” Quarterly Journal of Economics, August 2014, 129 (3): 1409-1447, and see also my former blogposts here and here)
The abstract reads:
"Using an incentivized measure of individuals’ taste for competition, this paper investigates whether this taste explains subsequent gender differences in earnings and industry choice in a sample of high ability MBA graduates. We find that “competitive” individuals earn 9% more than their less competitive counterparts do. Moreover, gender differences in taste for competition explain around 10% of the overall gender gap. We also find that competitive individuals are more likely to work in high-paying industries nine years later, which suggests that the relation between taste for competition and earnings persists in the long run. Lastly, we find that the effect of taste for competition emerges over time when MBAs and firms interact with each other."
Their main results can be seen in the following figures and tables:
First even among MBA's it seems there is a gender gap in tournament entry.
While risk aversion and confidence can account for some of that gender gap in tournament entry, a substantial gender gap remains.
Second, male MBA's have a higher salary after graduation than female MBA's.
Now, to assess the external relevance of competitiveness:
Competitiveness is highly positively correlated with higher earnings.
Finally, competitiveness remains an important variable even controlling for gender, and can account for about 10% of the gender gap in earnings.
They write:
"How important is the role of taste for competition in accounting for the gender gap in earnings? One way to answer this question is to compare the impact of taste for competition on the gender coefficient to the impact of other control variables on the same coefficient. This can be done by looking at column III, which includes all the variables in Table 1 except for the choice of tournament. Including these control variables noticeability reduces the gender gap by 20.7% (the gender coefficient changes from–0.122 to –0.097). This result puts the effect of taste for competition in perspective. Namely, the single experimental measure of taste for competition explains around half as much of the gender gap in earnings as a rich set of variables that include demographic characteristics, academic performance, and experimental and survey measures of important psychological attributes."
Finally, they have a great section to address to what extent competitiveness is really distinct from risk aversion: They write the following:
"Taste for competition and the choice of tournament
A clever feature of the experimental design of Niederle and Vesterlund (2007) is that participants make two choices between tournament and piece-rate. In one case, participants perform under the chosen payment scheme while in the other case the payment scheme is simply applied to their past performance (see section 3.1). We will refer to the choice of the tournament in the latter case as “uncompetitive tournament choice.” Because it does not include performing in a competitive environment, Niederle and Vesterlund (2007) argue that the choice between piece-rate and uncompetitive tournament is unaffected by the participants’ attitudes towards competition. If this is the case and the association between earnings and choosing the tournament is driven by taste for competition, then we should observe a weaker relation between earnings and uncompetitive tournament.
To evaluate whether choosing uncompetitive tournament is associated with earnings, we run regressions like the ones reported in columns II and IV of Table 3. In some regressions, we simply substitute tournament with uncompetitive tournament. We find that the coefficients for uncompetitive tournament are positive, but they are not statistically significant and they are half as large as the comparable coefficient in Table 3. In addition, the change in the gender coefficient due to the inclusion of uncompetitive tournament is much smaller and is not statistically significant. In other regressions, we include both tournament and uncompetitive tournament. We find that the coefficient for tournament is both economically and statistically significant whereas the coefficient for uncompetitive tournament is close to zero and far from statistical significance. These results provide compelling evidence that the association between tournament and earnings is indeed driven by the participants’ attitudes towards competition and is not related to the choice of a tournament per se."
Thursday, February 4, 2016
economics and women
This is a link to an old article I keep coming back to, so, to remember it, here is a blog post about it:
The Washington Post ran the following on March 10, 2014: "Catherine Rampell: Women should embrace the B’s in college to make more later"
Here is the killer figure:
The article writes:
"Claudia Goldin, an economics professor at Harvard, has been examining why so few women major in her field . The majority of new college grads are female, yet women receive only 29 percent of bachelor’s degrees in economics each year.
Goldin looked at how grades awarded in an introductory economics class affected the chance that a student would ultimately major in the subject. She found that the likelihood a woman would major in economics dropped steadily as her grade fell: Women who received a B in Econ 101, for example, were about half as likely as women who received A’s to stick with the discipline. The same discouragement gradient didn’t exist for men. Of Econ 101 students, men who received A’s were about equally as likely as men who received B’s to concentrate in the dismal science."
The Washington Post ran the following on March 10, 2014: "Catherine Rampell: Women should embrace the B’s in college to make more later"
Here is the killer figure:
The article writes:
"Claudia Goldin, an economics professor at Harvard, has been examining why so few women major in her field . The majority of new college grads are female, yet women receive only 29 percent of bachelor’s degrees in economics each year.
Goldin looked at how grades awarded in an introductory economics class affected the chance that a student would ultimately major in the subject. She found that the likelihood a woman would major in economics dropped steadily as her grade fell: Women who received a B in Econ 101, for example, were about half as likely as women who received A’s to stick with the discipline. The same discouragement gradient didn’t exist for men. Of Econ 101 students, men who received A’s were about equally as likely as men who received B’s to concentrate in the dismal science."
Wednesday, February 3, 2016
discrimination and IAT
There is a new WP "Discrimination as a Self-Fulfilling Prophecy: Evidence from French Grocery Stores", by Dylan Glover, Amanda Pallais and William Pariente.
The abstract reads:
Examining the performance of cashiers in a French grocery store chain, we find that manager bias negatively affects minority job performance. In the stores studied, cashiers work with different managers on different days and their schedules are determined quasi-randomly. When minority cashiers, but not majority cashiers, are scheduled to work with managers who are biased (as determined by an Implicit Association Test), they are absent more often, spend less time at work, scan items more slowly, and take more time between customers. Manager bias has consequences for the average performance of minority workers: while on average minority and majority workers perform equivalently, on days where managers are unbiased, minorities perform significantly better than majority workers."
here are the two main figures
The abstract reads:
Examining the performance of cashiers in a French grocery store chain, we find that manager bias negatively affects minority job performance. In the stores studied, cashiers work with different managers on different days and their schedules are determined quasi-randomly. When minority cashiers, but not majority cashiers, are scheduled to work with managers who are biased (as determined by an Implicit Association Test), they are absent more often, spend less time at work, scan items more slowly, and take more time between customers. Manager bias has consequences for the average performance of minority workers: while on average minority and majority workers perform equivalently, on days where managers are unbiased, minorities perform significantly better than majority workers."
here are the two main figures
Tuesday, February 2, 2016
conferences and workshops
Two Things to participate in (where I got asked to recommend it to others)
ONE:
CSWEP Call for Abstracts – CSWEP Sessions @ 2017 American Economic Association Meeting
Chicago, IL - Hyatt Regency Chicago, January 6-8, 2017
Deadline: March 7, 2016.
CSWEP invites abstract submissions for paper presentation at six CSWEP-sponsored sessions at the 2017 ASSA/AEA Meeting in Chicago.
Two sessions will be focused on Gender-related topics. Note that this year CSWEP is particularly interested in orienting one of the gender sessions around the economics of gender in the economics profession, although the decision to sponsor a session on this topic will depend on the number and quality of submissions.
Two sessions will be from the field of Educational Economics and two sessions will be from the field of Environmental/Energy Economics.
CSWEP's primary intention in organizing these sessions is to create an opportunity for junior women to present papers at economics meetings; and to provide them an opportunity to meet with and receive feedback from leading economists in their field. The term junior woman usually refers to a woman who is untenured, or who has received her PhD less than seven years ago; but could also refer to a woman who has not yet presented papers widely. Coauthors may be of either sex and may be junior or senior. Junior men may author papers in the gender-related sessions.
CSWEP sessions also aim to encourage quality research, particularly in the area of gender-related topics and in other fields dominated by men, and to encourage junior women to publish their research. As such, the organizers of the AEA sessions will select a subset the presented papers for publication in the May 2017 Papers & Proceedings issue of the American Economic Review. Authors of accepted abstracts will be invited to submit their paper for publication consideration in advance of the paper sessions.
In addition to individual paper submissions, complete session proposals may be submitted, but the papers in the session proposal will be considered individually. Duplication of paper presentation at multiple AEA Sessions is not permitted, therefore authors will be expected to notify CSWEP immediately and withdraw their abstract if their paper is accepted for a non-CSWEP session at the 2017 AEA Meeting. Similarly, authors whose paper is accepted to a 2017 CSWEP session will be expected to withdraw it from consideration by any other organization at the same meetings.
The deadline for submission is March 7, 2016.
To have research considered for the CSWEP-sponsored sessions at the 2017 AEA Meeting, the Correspondence Author must complete an online submission form and upload an abstract at: http://bit.ly/1ZI59sr
The application form will ask for the following information:
1. Indication of submission to either the Gender-related Topics, Economics of Gender in the Economics Profession, Educational Economics or Environmental/Energy Economics sessions. Note that all applications submitted to the Economics of Gender in the Economics Profession will automatically be considered for the Gender-related Topics as well.
2. Indication of a single abstract submission or a complete session submission.
3. The Name, Title, Affiliation, Mailing Address and Email for the correspondence author or session organizer.
4. Name (s), Title(s), Affiliation(s) and Email address(es) for any coauthor(s) or for each corresponding author in a complete session submission.
The abstract should be a PDF document, with a length not to exceed two pages, double-spaced, and with a maximum of 650 words. Name the file: “Abstract_Corresponding Author Last Name-First Name.” The abstract should contain details on motivation, contribution, methodology and data (if applicable); and be clearly identified with the author(s) name(s). Completed papers may be sent but may not substitute for an abstract of the appropriate length.
Questions can be addressed to Jennifer Socey, CSWEP Admin, cswep@econ.duke.edu.
Thank you!
Jennifer Socey, Admin Assistant
American Economic Association
Committee for the Status of Women in the Economics Profession
Department of Economics, Duke University
Box 90097, Durham, N.C. 27708
(ph) 919-681-4365
(fax) 919-684-8974
SECOND
Dear all,
ONE:
CSWEP Call for Abstracts – CSWEP Sessions @ 2017 American Economic Association Meeting
Chicago, IL - Hyatt Regency Chicago, January 6-8, 2017
Deadline: March 7, 2016.
CSWEP invites abstract submissions for paper presentation at six CSWEP-sponsored sessions at the 2017 ASSA/AEA Meeting in Chicago.
Two sessions will be focused on Gender-related topics. Note that this year CSWEP is particularly interested in orienting one of the gender sessions around the economics of gender in the economics profession, although the decision to sponsor a session on this topic will depend on the number and quality of submissions.
Two sessions will be from the field of Educational Economics and two sessions will be from the field of Environmental/Energy Economics.
CSWEP's primary intention in organizing these sessions is to create an opportunity for junior women to present papers at economics meetings; and to provide them an opportunity to meet with and receive feedback from leading economists in their field. The term junior woman usually refers to a woman who is untenured, or who has received her PhD less than seven years ago; but could also refer to a woman who has not yet presented papers widely. Coauthors may be of either sex and may be junior or senior. Junior men may author papers in the gender-related sessions.
CSWEP sessions also aim to encourage quality research, particularly in the area of gender-related topics and in other fields dominated by men, and to encourage junior women to publish their research. As such, the organizers of the AEA sessions will select a subset the presented papers for publication in the May 2017 Papers & Proceedings issue of the American Economic Review. Authors of accepted abstracts will be invited to submit their paper for publication consideration in advance of the paper sessions.
In addition to individual paper submissions, complete session proposals may be submitted, but the papers in the session proposal will be considered individually. Duplication of paper presentation at multiple AEA Sessions is not permitted, therefore authors will be expected to notify CSWEP immediately and withdraw their abstract if their paper is accepted for a non-CSWEP session at the 2017 AEA Meeting. Similarly, authors whose paper is accepted to a 2017 CSWEP session will be expected to withdraw it from consideration by any other organization at the same meetings.
The deadline for submission is March 7, 2016.
To have research considered for the CSWEP-sponsored sessions at the 2017 AEA Meeting, the Correspondence Author must complete an online submission form and upload an abstract at: http://bit.ly/1ZI59sr
The application form will ask for the following information:
1. Indication of submission to either the Gender-related Topics, Economics of Gender in the Economics Profession, Educational Economics or Environmental/Energy Economics sessions. Note that all applications submitted to the Economics of Gender in the Economics Profession will automatically be considered for the Gender-related Topics as well.
2. Indication of a single abstract submission or a complete session submission.
3. The Name, Title, Affiliation, Mailing Address and Email for the correspondence author or session organizer.
4. Name (s), Title(s), Affiliation(s) and Email address(es) for any coauthor(s) or for each corresponding author in a complete session submission.
The abstract should be a PDF document, with a length not to exceed two pages, double-spaced, and with a maximum of 650 words. Name the file: “Abstract_Corresponding Author Last Name-First Name.” The abstract should contain details on motivation, contribution, methodology and data (if applicable); and be clearly identified with the author(s) name(s). Completed papers may be sent but may not substitute for an abstract of the appropriate length.
Questions can be addressed to Jennifer Socey, CSWEP Admin, cswep@econ.duke.edu.
Thank you!
Jennifer Socey, Admin Assistant
American Economic Association
Committee for the Status of Women in the Economics Profession
Department of Economics, Duke University
Box 90097, Durham, N.C. 27708
(ph) 919-681-4365
(fax) 919-684-8974
SECOND
Dear all,
as already for 8 years we invite PhD students, young assistant professors, and researchers in central banks to our 9th BESLab Experimental Economics Summer School in Macroeconomics in Universitat Pompeu Fabra, June 13-19, 2016
. see online program and lecturers here
This week also includes an attendance at a 2 day workshop (16-17 June) within the Barcelona GSE summer forum on Theoretical and Experimental Macroeconomics. The keynote speakers workshop are In-Koo Cho (University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign) and Albert Marcet (ICREA-IAE and Barcelona GSE).
The workshop intends to promote an active exchange and interaction of ideas and work on macroeconomic issues from behavioral, experimental, and/or theoretical approaches, and therefore seek a good mix of theory and experimental papers, jointly organized by Barcelona GSE and by BES Lab (Behavioral and Experimental Sciences Lab, before called LEEX) at Universitat Pompeu Fabra.
Download Call for Papers (pdf) for workshop
Submit a Paper (apply form) for worshop
Submit a Paper (apply form) for worshop
For over 30 years, macroeconomic models have had explicit micro foundations about the behavior of firms, consumers and government agencies, leading to closer ties between micro/game theorists and macro theorists. On the applied side, the assumptions and predictions of macroeconomic models have historically been tested using non-experimental field data as collected by government agencies. An alternative empirical approach attracting increased attention is to evaluate these models using controlled laboratory settings with human subjects, minimizing noisy and confounding factors present in field data. The experimental findings can be informative about questions like equilibrium selection or the efficacy of various government policies.A recent survey on macro experiments can be found in “Macroeconomics: A Survey of Laboratory Research” by John Duffy, available here.
Organizers of workshop and summer school
Organizers of workshop and summer school
- John Duffy (University of California, Irvine)
- Frank Heinemann (Technical University of Berlin)
- Rosemarie Nagel (ICREA-UPF and Barcelona GSE)
- Shyam Sunder (Yale University)
- To see the full list of speakers and papers from the 2015 edition, download the workshop program [pdf]
- The papers of the 2015 workshop are available on the online workshop calendar.
- To see the full list of speakers and papers from the Summer Forum 2015, download the workshop program[pdf]
Speakers and papers of previous years in our workshop
For more information please contact summerforum@
Monday, February 1, 2016
women and altruism
Bob Slonim tells me of a new paper of his: Matthew Lilley and Robert Slonim "Gender Differences in Altruism: Responses to a Natural Disaster," IZA DP No. 9657 January 2016
The abstract reads:
"High-profile disasters can cause large spikes in philanthropy and volunteerism. By providing temporary positive shocks to the altruism of donors, these natural experiments help identify heterogeneity in the distributions of the latent altruism which motivates donors. This study examines gender heterogeneity of volunteer response by blood donors following the most devastating Bushfires in Australia’s history. Using difference in differences analyses, we observe a sharp increase in blood donations after the 2009 Victorian Bushfires. Several key features of this increase are consistent with the predictions of a model where the distribution of latent altruism has smaller variance among women than men. First, the highest increase in donations occurs among previous non-donors, lapsed donors and less frequent donors. Further, the increase in donations following the Bushfires, compared to non-disaster periods, is substantially greater for females than males; the proportional increase in the number of females donating for the first time after the disaster is approximately twice the proportional increase for men. Notably, this gender gap decreases with the frequency with which people have previously donated. "
Here are some key figures:
and
The abstract reads:
"High-profile disasters can cause large spikes in philanthropy and volunteerism. By providing temporary positive shocks to the altruism of donors, these natural experiments help identify heterogeneity in the distributions of the latent altruism which motivates donors. This study examines gender heterogeneity of volunteer response by blood donors following the most devastating Bushfires in Australia’s history. Using difference in differences analyses, we observe a sharp increase in blood donations after the 2009 Victorian Bushfires. Several key features of this increase are consistent with the predictions of a model where the distribution of latent altruism has smaller variance among women than men. First, the highest increase in donations occurs among previous non-donors, lapsed donors and less frequent donors. Further, the increase in donations following the Bushfires, compared to non-disaster periods, is substantially greater for females than males; the proportional increase in the number of females donating for the first time after the disaster is approximately twice the proportional increase for men. Notably, this gender gap decreases with the frequency with which people have previously donated. "
Here are some key figures:
and
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