Research

Work in Progress

• Competing Against Stereotypes: Gender Beliefs and the Competition Gap. Joint work with Michael Hilweg-Waldeck.
  • We study the role of first- and second-order beliefs in explaining the gender competition gap. We collect data on the performance and competitiveness of men and women in all unique tasks previously studied in the literature. First, we show that the competition gap varies by task, with larger gaps in stereotypically male tasks. In an online experiment, we elicit beliefs about gender differences in performance and find significant gender differences: both men and women believe their own gender performs better, yet both think others believe men outperform women. Our main finding is that across the tasks and studies used in the literature, actual gender performance differences correlate weakly with competition gaps, while beliefs about these differences explain 54% of the variation. Lastly, we conduct a lab experiment where we manipulate task stereotypes through framing and selective information disclosure on what other participants think. While these treatments shift beliefs about gender performance, they do not meaningfully affect competitiveness.
  • Working on the first draft.
• Why don’t you deduct to donate more? Joint work with Michael Hilweg-Waldeck.
  • Anecdotal evidence suggests very low rates of tax deduction for in-person donations in the field. Teaming up with a large Austrian charitable organization, we analyze their historical data and persistently document this phenomenon. To examine the reasons for this negligence of tax incentives, we first implement a representative online survey to collect beliefs on the moral perception of deduction and reasons for which people may be hesitant to deduct. The survey suggests social image concerns and a lack of information for the majority of the population as main drivers. Building on this, we run both an online and a field experiment to study the role of procedural information and social image in more detail. Our results suggest that a mere lack of information on how to deduct one’s donations cannot explain the low rates of deduction for field donations. Similarly, providing people with second-order beliefs on the moral perception of deducting did not induce a higher deduction propensity.
  • Working on the first draft.
• Don’t hate your luck, hate its shape. Joint work with Michael Hilweg-Waldeck.
  • We explore how the optimal contest size in winner-takes-all tournaments responds to the shape of noise parameter’s (luck’s) distribution. Our theory predicts that, when good/bad luck outcomes are more likely the equilibrium effort is increasing/decreasing in the contest size. Further, the contest size that maximizes the aggregate performance under when bad luck outcomes are more likely is smaller than when good luck outcomes are more likely. However, if the objective is to maximize best possible performance the reverse is true. The reason is that while a larger contest leads to lower efforts, the benefit of having more luck draws dominates in the latter case. We plan an online experiment to confirm our theory results.
  • Theory section completed. Working on the experimental design.
• Inequality as a constraint on (repugnant) markets. Joint work with Jakob Schmidhäuser.
  • Literature has established that third parties are opposed to certain transactions even when they impose no direct externalities on them. Such repugnant transactions are broadly viewed as a constraint on markets. While various reasons for the emergence of repugnance have been discussed, we propose economic inequality as an important channel. In our experiment, people judge 9 different economic transactions in two inequality and one equality treatment. We elicit the main dimensions of repugnance suggested by the literature as well as the willingness to ban each transaction. Our novelty is twofold. First, we are the first to study how inequality affects repugnance. Second, we establish the role of descriptive norms in the context of repugnance by eliciting beliefs about others’ choices.
  • Collecting Data
• Non-Standard Choice and Matching. Joint work with Gian Caspari, Michael Hilweg-Waldeck.
  • We study the impact of non-standard choice behavior on performance of matching mechanisms. We have planned a series of experiments to compare sequential mechanisms with different menu sizes and levels of choice complexity. By doing so, our objective is to gain a deeper understanding of the challenges presented by non-standard choice behavior and provide insights and potential strategies for enhancing mechanism performance. Furthermore, we plan to expand on the existing theoretical framework to incorporate our experimental findings.
  • Working on the experimental design.