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)

Despite century-long declines in prejudice, perceived discrimination remains stable. In this paper I propose that this is driven by an overestimation of the level of animus in society: \textit{misanticipation} of preference-based discrimination leads to labour supply distortions which incentivise statistical discrimination and outcomes that confirm biased beliefs. I derive a theoretical model of self-confirming discrimination which arises in the job-application decision to demonstrate this mechanism. I show that correctly attributing the cause of discrimination leads to multiple equilibria such that arriving at inequality represents a coordination error. However, misattributing discrimination to taste-based origins leads only to a discriminatory equilibrium and reduces the perceived return to deviating from discrimination-inducing application strategies. In a pre-registered laboratory experiment, I find that subjects who experience discrimination from an ambiguous origin overestimate the probability that this inequality is caused by taste-based discriminators and this reduces the application rate of the disadvantaged group: a 1 percentage point increase in believed probability that discrimination is taste-based leads to a 0.22 percentage point decrease in the probability that a subject in the discriminated group applies to a job, perpetuating statistical discrimination. Moreover, misattribution leads to stronger perceptions of market unfairness and lower demand for affirmative action among the favoured group. This demonstrates that the stability of discrimination is determined both by labour demand and labour supply effects. Particularly, the source of the discrimination that one expects is detrimental to the longevity of inequality.

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)