Research

Works in Progress

Statistical Discrimination with Endogenous Labour Supply and Affirmative Action (Job Market Paper)

This paper studies how beliefs of discrimination in hiring may affect labour supply decisions and thus become self-fulfilling. I focus on the effect of such beliefs on the application gap: the difference between the share of job applicants that are from particular groups. For instance, conditional on productivity, women tend to apply to less masculine and competitive jobs with better non-wage amenities: they avoid applying to jobs in which they are more likely to be discriminated against but also are higher paying. I will first present results from a survey of undergraduate students in the UK which aims to report on whether individuals anticipate discrimination when they enter the labour market and whether this depends on their gender and their chosen degree subject. I ask participants whether beliefs of discrimination affected their chosen degree subject and if it may affect their choice of future employer. I next present a theoretical model which shows that two ex-ante identical groups of workers can coordinate on heterogeneous job-application rates due to beliefs of discrimination. In this case, rational employers will have discriminatory beliefs as they will see unequal distributions of talent among the applicants from each group. I also show that only under certain criteria may a quota always succeed in destabilising this discriminatory equilibrium. Finally, I test the assumptions of this model using a stylised laboratory experiment.

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

Trust—the belief in another individual’s or organization’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.

Identifying Trust from Social Preferences in Experiments (with R. Caputo)

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