Research

Working Papers

The Cultural Trust Gap: Discriminative Trust Across England’s North-South Divide  Working Paper Here 

Works in Progress

(Mis)anticipated Discrimination (Job Market Paper)

This paper investigates how beliefs about the underlying source of discrimination - taste-based or statistical - affect the emergence, persistence and consequences of discriminatory outcomes. Using a representative U.S. survey, I document that individuals systematically overestimate the incidence of taste-based discrimination in society. I argue that such misperceptions can sustain discriminatory outcomes even in the absence of genuine preferential biases. To formalise this mechanism, I develop a theoretical model in which individuals, anticipating discrimination, condition their job application decisions on identity, thereby rationalising statistical discrimination in a set of equilibria. The application and hiring strategies in a discriminatory equilibrium are identical for when employers are information-constrained rational agents versus when they harbour taste-based discrimination, potentially leading workers to misattribute the source of discrimination. The misattribution of the source of discrimination particularly sustains discriminatory outcomes as individuals fail to recognise that their beliefs, not employer animus, drive these patterns, causing them to undervalue deviations from equilibrium application strategies. I hypothesise that one mechanism which may lead to misattribution is cursedness: workers fail to internalise that others' application behaviour is itself identity-contingent leading rational employers to statistically discriminate. In a laboratory experiment, I demonstrate that individuals do misattribute discriminatory outcomes to taste-based motives and this is driven by cursed strategic reasoning. I test for consequences of misattribution on demand for temporary anti-discrimination policies and perceptions of fairness in the labour market.

Can We Trust the Trust Game: Identifying the Effect of Inequality on Trust (with R. Caputo)

Gender Competition & Stereotypes: A General Equilibrium Framework (with M. Hilweg-Waldeck)

The Fairness of Discrimination (with S. Schweighofer-Kodritsch & E. Ø. Sørensen)

Expecting Bias: How Beliefs of Discrimination Shape The Gender Application Gap (with R. Caputo, M. Hilweg-Waldeck & A. Zednik)