Research

Works in Progress

(Mis)-Anticipated Discrimination (Job Market Paper)

Why does labour market discrimination — and beliefs thereof — persist, even as preferential bias has declined? This project tests whether workers—when faced with ambiguous employer behaviour—misattribute statistical discrimination to taste-based animus, whether this belief trap can self-perpetuate discrimination even in unbiased markets and what are the consequences of such. I construct a theoretical model of self-confirming equilibria where workers of different groups are endowed with ex-ante equal productivity but choose whether to supply labour to an employer who observes a noisy signal of their productivity before choosing who to hire. This model demonstrates the existence of discriminatory and non-discriminatory equilibria if all agents are sophisticated and Bayesian such that discrimination is only statistical and correctly believed to be so. However, workers may continue to attribute the discrimination to inherent preferences if they underestimate the level of sophistication of employers. Using a novel laboratory experiment with minimal group identities and controlled employer types, I test this underlying assumption to demonstrate that workers do tend to attribute discrimination to taste-based origins and this is driven by a lack of understanding of how their strategies may cause rational statistical discrimination. This research not only clarifies why discrimination endures, but also demonstrates the critical role of belief formation in shaping support for affirmative action and the prospects for breaking out of discriminatory equilibria.

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

Trust—the belief in another individual’s or organisation’s intent to act in good faith—is a cornerstone of social prosperity. However, cultural norms significantly influence trust levels within and between groups, often leading to discriminatory behaviors that undermine cooperation. This paper investigates the impact of culture on trust in England—a culturally and economically divided nation—using a novel experimental approach that isolates trust from confounding factors such as risk preferences and distributional concerns. Focusing on self-identified Southerners and Northerners, I find evidence of a cultural trust gap. Specifically, while Southerners exhibit equal trust towards both groups, Northerners trust Southerners significantly less than their own group. By decomposing trust into its conditional and unconditional components, I show that this disparity is driven by unconditional trust: Northerners perceive Southerners as more selfish than their own culture.

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)