high school experiences the gender wage gap and the selection of occupation abstractusing within high school variation and controlling for a measure of cognitive ability this article finds that high school leadership experiences explain a significant portion of the residual gender wage gap and selection into management occupations our results imply that high school leadership could build non cognitive productive skills that are rewarded years later in the labour market and that explain a portion of the systematic difference in pay between men and women alternatively high school leadership could be a proxy variable for personality characteristics that differ between men and women and that drive higher pay and becoming a manager because high school leadership experiences are exogenous to direct labour market experiences our results leave less room for direct labour market discrimination as a driver of the gender wage gap and occupation selection

do women have more shame than men an experiment on self assessment and the shame of overestimating oneself we analyze how subjects self assessment depends on whether its accuracy is observable to others we find that women downgrade their self assessment given observability while men do not this holds true when the self assessment concerns a task with individual as well as competitive incentives women avoid the shame they may have if others observe that they overestimated themselves men however do not seem to be similarly shame averse this gender difference may be due to different societal expectations while we find that men are expected to be overconfident women are not the negative effect on women s self assessment is eliminated when performance is only imperfectly observable shame aversion may explain recent findings that women shy away from competition demanding jobs and wage negotiations as entering these situations demonstrates confidence in one s ability

dynamics of fine wine and asset prices evidence from short and long run co movements this article examines short and long term price linkages among the majority of fine wine and equity markets over the period of 2003 to 2012 we do not consider the price index liv ex 100 or 500 as is typically undertaken in previous studies but rather examine the auction price series of the world s most traded wine vintage pairs 5 bordeaux first growth 8 bordeaux second growth 5 burgundy 3 rhone 4 italian 5 californian 1 australian and 1 portuguese a global equity index is also included using the morgan stanley capital international world cointegration procedures the granger non causality test and ecm are used to analyse short and long run relationships among these markets the results indicate a strong effect of financial markets on wine prices and short term causality for certain wines moreover the findings indicate short run causality between the wines themselves revealing a leader exogenous or follower endogenous status of certain fine wines in price dynamics and also long ru

expert opinion and compensation evidence from a musical competition pianists who achieve high scores in the queen elizabeth musical competition are rewarded by subsequent success this is not surprising in itself but it is not immediately clear whether this is caused by the score or because those who have high scores are better pianists data on eleven consecutive competitions make it possible to distinguish between the two explanations since an unexpected situation allows us to use an instrumental variable the randomly assigned order in which musicians appear at the competition uncorrelated with ability but correlated with the results of the competition

women don t run election aversion and candidate entry to study gender differences in candidate emergence we conduct a laboratory experiment in which we control the incentives potential candidates face manipulate features of the electoral environment and measure beliefs and preferences we find that men and women are equally likely to volunteer when the representative is chosen randomly but that women are less likely to become candidates when the representative is chosen by an election this difference does not arise from disparities in abilities risk aversion or beliefs but rather from the specific competitive and strategic context of campaigns and elections thus we find evidence that women are election averse whereas men are not election aversion persists with variations in the electoral environment disappearing only when campaigns are both costless and completely truthful

why political reservations many countries are amending their political systems to set aside positions to groups such as women and racial or religious minorities that are perceived as being disadvantaged using evidence from india this article assesses the case for these reservations jel h4 o15 several countries have introduced procedures either explicit quotas or forms of gerrymandering to ensure political representation of disadvantaged groups such as women or ethnic minorities in 2001 quotas for women in parliaments were in force in more than 30 countries in india seats are reserved for historically disadvantaged groups scheduled castes or sc and scheduled tribes or st in federal or state legislative assemblies and for both historically disadvantaged groups and women at all levels of the panchayat system the system of decentralized decision making on the basis of evidence accumulated about the indian experience this paper reviews the case for reservation

does gender inequality affect household green consumption behaviour in china abstract in this paper we examine whether gender inequality affects a household s decision to adopt green consumption behaviour in china building upon the literature that claims women tend to be more environmentally friendly than men we hypothesise that households in which women play a stronger role adopt greener consumption lifestyles based on a nationwide survey our empirical results show that households in counties with greater gender inequality use less energy efficient electric products and are less willing to save energy the results are robust to a number of variations in our empirical models social and economic factors are included to further explore the mechanisms underlying households decisions our findings provide new insights into green development from a micro level bottom up perspective they are relevant for policy makers because they indicate that promoting gender equality can have a favourable impact on green development

subjective performance and the value of blind evaluation we investigate the incentive and project screening effects of anonymity in a setting of subjective performance evaluation if the review process is blind then the applicant s payoff relevant type is hidden from the reviewer if the process is nonblind or informed then the reviewer observes the applicant s type directly in either case the evaluator receives a noisy signal on the quality of the agent s project and decides whether to accept or reject it we find that if the signal is not verifiable then informed evaluation results in an excessively steep equilibrium acceptance policy the standard applied to low ability applicants is too stringent and the standard applied to high ability applicants is too lenient blind review in which all applicants face the same standard often provides better incentives but it discards valuable information for screening projects we discover that blind review is more likely to be preferred by the evaluator when 1 the applicant pool is skewed toward high ability types 2 the stakes from acceptance are relatively high for applicants 3 both types of errors are relatively less costly or 4 there is little competition among reviewers we also discover that under blind review the evaluator may benefit from a more diverse applicant pool

overconfidence and social signalling evidence from both psychology and economics indicates that individuals give statements that appear to overestimate their ability compared to that of others we test three theories that predict such relative overconfidence the first theory argues that overconfidence can be generated by bayesian updating from a common prior and truthful statements if individuals do not know their true type the second theory suggests that self image concerns asymmetrically affect the choice to receive new information about one s abilities and this asymmetry can produce overconfidence the third theory is that overconfidence is induced by the desire to send positive signals to others about one s own skill this suggests either a bias in judgement strategic lying or both we formulate this theory precisely using a large data set of relative ability judgements about two cognitive tests we reject the restrictions imposed by the bayesian model and also reject a key prediction of the self image models that individuals with optimistic beliefs will be less likely to search for further information about their skill because this information might shatter their self image we provide evidence that personality traits strongly affect relative ability judgements in a pattern that is consistent with the third theory of social signalling our results together suggest that overconfidence in statements is more likely to be induced by social concerns than by either of the other two factors copyright 2013 oxford university press

do women choose different jobs from men mechanisms of application segregation in the market for managerial workers this paper examines differences in the jobs for which men and women apply in order to better understand gender segregation in managerial jobs we develop and test an integrative theory of why women might apply to different jobs than men we note that constraints based on gender role socialization may affect three determinants of job applications how individuals evaluate the rewards provided by different jobs whether they identify with those jobs and whether they believe that their applications will be successful we then develop hypotheses about the role of each of these decision factors in mediating gender differences in job applications we test these hypotheses using the first direct comparison of how similarly qualified men and women apply to jobs based on data on the job searches of mba students our findings indicate that women are less likely than men to apply to finance and consulting jobs and are more likely to apply to general management positions these differences are partly explained by women s preference for jobs with better anticipated work life balance their lower identification with stereotypically masculine jobs and their lower expectations of job offer success in such stereotypically masculine jobs we find no evidence that women are less likely to receive job offers in any of the fields studied these results point to some of the ways in which gender differences can become entrenched through the long term expectations and assumptions that job candidates carry with them into the application process

do competitive workplaces deter female workers a large scale natural field experiment on job entry decisions an important line of research using laboratory experiments has provided a new potential reason for gender imbalances in labour markets men are more competitively inclined than women whether and to what extent gender differences in attitudes toward competition lead to differences in naturally occurring labour markets remains an open question to examine this we run a natural field experiment on job entry decisions where we randomize almost 9000 job seekers into different compensation regimes by varying the role that individual competition plays in setting the wage and the gender composition we examine whether a competitive compensation regime by itself can cause differential job entry the data highlight the power of the compensation regime in that women disproportionately shy away from competitive work settings yet there are important factors that attenuate the gender differences including whether the job is performed in teams whether the position has overt gender associations and the age of the job seekers we also find that the effect is most pronounced in labour markets with attractive alternative employment options furthermore our results suggest that preferences over uncertainty can be just as important as preferences over competition per se in driving job entry choices

an analysis of the correlates of discrimination facing young hispanic job seekers this study examines the extent and correlates of discrimination faced by young accented hispanic males in chicago and san diego using the outcomes of job applications by matched pairs of anglo and hispanic job seekers this is one of the first examples of audits being used in the labormarket area the audit methodology provides a powerful basis for examining discriminatory hiring practices because it permits direct comparison of hiring outcomes for pairs of anglo and hispanic jobseekers with similar labor market qualifications in this paper we first present differences in anglo hispanic success rates in filing applications obtaining interviews and obtaining jobs this builds on the descriptive analysis presented in harry cross et al 1990 we then focus on the correlates of differential success in obtaining interviews and in subsequent job acquisition i the audit methodology

subject of degree and the gender wage differential evidence from the uk and germany abstract we show that controlling for subject of degree explains a significant part of the male female gender wage differential amongst graduates using data from the labour force surveys of the united kingdom and germany we find similar results in these two countries subject of degree explains about 2 4 higher wages of male over female graduates after controlling for age industry region part time and public sector employment this is a significant part between 8 and 20 of the overall male female gender wage gap and an even larger amount of the part explained by factors entered into wage equations at around 24 30 of the explained component

a decomposition method on employment and wage discrimination and its application in urban china 2002 2013 abstract labor market discrimination is an important issue in developing countries where path dependent institutions have been dominant while effective institutional arrangements and policies have been hidden by local customs and culture however the existing applications of classical blinder oaxaca decomposition face criticism for their imprecise understanding of the factors affecting institutional discrimination in labor markets as well as for their lack of power in formulating well targeted anti discrimination policies following oaxaca 1973 we propose a new method to decompose the total discrimination index tdi to analyze employment and wage discrimination in the labor markets of developing countries the tdi is decomposed into the employment discrimination index edi and the wage discrimination index wdi then into the underpayment index to majorities upi and the overpayment index to minorities opi we apply this method to the institutional discrimination against rural migrants in china s urban areas using national representative data from 2002 to 2013 we have found that 1 the tdi increased quickly after china entered the wto then dropped after anti discrimination policies were implemented 2 the tdi is mainly determined by the upi while the tdi s fluctuation is mainly determined by the wdi our method provides insights into the changing composition of employment and wage discrimination and their respective labor market outcomes in developing countries as a result appropriate policy measures may be developed accordingly

anonymous job applications of fresh ph d economists abstract this paper analyzes anonymous job applications of ph d economists in the academic job market we use data on interview invitations from a randomized experiment at a european based research institution results show that the underrepresented gender was hurt by anonymous applications

pride and prejudice using ethnic sounding names and inter ethnic marriages to identify labour market discrimination labour markets discriminate against workers with particular ethnic sounding names we use non random sorting into interethnic marriage and salient differences between sephardic and ashkenazi surnames to evaluate the causal impact of sephardic affiliation on wages using the 1995 israeli census we estimate the effect of a sephardic sounding surname on wages we first compare the wages of israeli jewish males born to sephardic fathers and ashkenazi mothers sa who are more likely to carry a sephardic surname with the wages of israeli jewish males born to ashkenazi fathers and sephardic mothers as we find that israeli labor markets discriminate based on perceived ethnicity sa workers earn significantly less than their as counterparts we then exploit the custom of women to adopt their husbands surnames to disentangle actual ethnicity from the ethnicity perceived by the market consistent with ethnic discrimination based on surnames we find that it is father in law s ethnicity rather than father s ethnicity that shapes female wage rates finally we find that labor markets discriminate based on surname only when those names provide additional information about ethnicity when ethnicity can be discerned from skin tone surnames do not provide additional explanatory power with respect to wages

distributional preferences and competitive behavior we study experimentally the relationship between distributional preferences and competitive behavior we find that spiteful subjects react strongest to competitive pressure and win in a tournament significantly more often than efficiency minded and inequality averse subjects however when given the choice between a tournament and a piece rate scheme efficiency minded subjects choose the tournament most often while spiteful and inequality averse subjects avoid it when controlling for distributional preferences risk attitudes and past performance the gender gap in the willingness to compete is no longer significant indicating that gender related variables explain why twice as many men as women self select into competition

to save or savor the rate of return to storing wine for 28 000 one can buy a jaguar xj6 308 shares of mcdonnell douglas stock a one tenth interest in an oklahoma gas well 4i years of undergraduate life at stanford or one bottle of chateau lafite vintage 1806 that s 1 166 67 an ounce at this moment gold is worth only 275 an ounce and you can t smell or drink it saturday review of literature 1979 p 38 nine years ago 70 could persuade a paris restaurant to part with this same bottle of liquid gold goldwyn 1979 p 4 but for balance admire the growth of a slightly more pedestrian vintage a 1959 beaulieu estate bottled cabernet today a case of it may be purchased for 1 200 for the more modest budget 950 will buy a case of 1970 beaulieu george latour private reserve cabernet all this goes to show that wine the right wine in the last 10 years has provided the prudently daring investor with a spectacular return the virtues of wine as a liquid asset have been tested recently by krasker 1979 krasker cannot reject a hypothesis that wine offers no extraordinary rate of return the wine investor can expect no greater return than that which accrues to riskless assets while krasker finds the concept that an investment in wine outperforms treasury bills in nominal return incompatible with the way economists believe most assets are priced his result seems counter to intuition wine as a subcategory of riskless assets seems contrary to wine s very nature wine is a living substance its maturation process extends well beyond the bottling day lasting as long as 20 40 years in the case of some reds while a few others refuse to retire at 65 but the proper age

gender and competition at a young age gender gaps may be observed in a variety of economic and social environments one of the possible determining factors is that men are more competitive than women and so when the competitiveness of the environment increases the performance of men increases relative to that of women we test this hypothesis in a field study conducted with 9 year old children running on a track they first run alone and then in pairs over a short distance with different gender composition of the pairs the results support the hypothesis that performance in competition varies according to gender when children ran alone there was no difference in performance in competition boys but not girls improved their performance this finding relates to the discussion regarding single sex schools the outcomes of examinations in a mixed sex school can show a gender gap in favor of boys even when this gap does not reflect actual abilities girls who are as talented as boys will end up performing worse just because they are not as competitive and will not achieve as high scores in examinations as boys

exchange rate depreciation and exports the case of singapore revisited this article revisits the weak relationship between exchange rate depreciation and exports for singapore using a bivariate generalized autoregressive conditional heteroscedasticity in mean model that simultaneously estimates time varying risk the evidence shows that depreciation does not significantly improve exports but that exchange rate risk significantly impedes exports in sum singaporean policy makers can better promote export growth by stabilizing the exchange rate rather than generating its depreciation

ingratiation experimental evidence we investigate experimentally ingratiatory behavior expressed by opinion conformity both individuals performance at a task and their opinions on various topics can be observed before unequal payoffs are assigned by a second mover in some treatments first movers can change their opinion after learning that held by the second mover we find evidence of high ingratiation indices as opinion conformity is rewarded however second movers reward conformity less when it is common knowledge that opinions can be manipulated strategically introducing a monetary cost for changing opinion reduces ingratiation introducing performance related pay for the second mover makes ingratiation less rewarding but does not eliminate it completely reducing the noise in the measurement of ability has little effect

gender differences in market competitiveness in a real workplace evidence from performance based pay tournaments among teachers recent lab and field experiments suggest that women are less effective than men in a competitive environment in this paper i examine how individual performance in a real work place is affected by a competitive environment and by its gender mix the competition is among math english and language teachers who participated in a rank order tournament that rewarded teachers with large cash bonuses based on the test performance of their classes the evidence suggest that the average ranking winning rate and awarded prize did not differ by gender nor between teachers in competition groups with only female teachers or with both genders i also find that the direct impact of the bonus program on students outcomes did not vary by male and female teachers or by the type of competitive environment in terms of gender mix of the participants as for mechanisms that can explain these results i found no differences by either gender or by the gender mix of the competition group in teachers awareness and familiarity with the program and its rules and in effort and teaching methods women though were more pessimistic about the effectiveness of teachers performance pay and more realistic than men about their likelihood of winning bonuses

policy generosity employer heterogeneity and women s employment opportunities the welfare state paradox reexamined scholars of comparative family policy research have raised concerns about potential negative outcomes of generous family policies an issue known as the welfare state paradox they suspect that s

from mill town to board room the rise of women s paid labor the widespread participation of women in paid labor outside of the home and in the highest echelons of society would have been unheard of a century ago this paper documents this dramatic change in women s social and economic status and argues that it was determined both by contemporaneous demand factors and by the characteristics expectations and social norms regarding work and family of different cohorts of women history suggests that change in women s labor force experiences may be slow because it must await the entry of new cohorts of women and also of men into the labor market

explaining occupational sex segregation and wages findings from a model with fixed effects does segregation arise because female occupations have financial advantages for women planning to spend some time as homemakers as human capital theorists claim do male occupations have more onerous working conditions that explain their higher earnings as the neoclassical notion of compensating differentials suggests or do female occupations have low wages that are depressed by the sort of discrimination at issue in comparable worth as sociologists have argued to answer these questions the authors use a model with fixed effects to predict the earnings of young men and women from a pooled cross section time series of the national longitudinal survey analyses are undertaken for both blacks and whites a fixed effects model is useful for answering these questions because it corrects for the selection bias that results from the tendency of persons who differ on stable characteristics that are unmeasured but affect earnings to select themselves into different occupations the authors find little evidence that female occupations provide either low penalties for intermittent employment at high starting wages the advantages human capital theorists have argued them to have rather there is evidence of pay discrimination against men and women in predominantly female occupations implications for economic and sociological theories of labor markets are discussed authors

heterogeneity and fine wine prices application of the quantile regression approach this study addresses the price heterogeneity of the five first growths of bordeaux we apply the quantile regression qr approach with market segmentation based on wine bottle price quantiles we

can t buy me love a field experiment exploring the trade off between income and caste status in an indian matrimonial market i introduction the relationship between economic motive and observance of discriminatory social customs is hardly new to economists this is implicit in the writings of becker 1957 1973 1974 on discrimination and other social customs and explicit in arrow s essay 1972 on discrimination and akerlof s work 1980 on the interactive relationship between economic incentives and discriminatory social customs as scholars like becker arrow and akerlof have investigated the relationship between economic incentives and the prevalence of custom based discrimination of which status based discrimination is an example it is natural to consult the related empirical evidence on the impact of economic incentives on the extent of status based discrimination surprisingly the extant empirical literature is mostly silent on how economic incentives may directly interact with status based discrimination 1 this is atypical as one would be hard pressed to find an issue as weighty as status based discrimination yet our knowledge in this aspect remains oddly limited our study aspires to rectify this gap this study investigates whether and what magnitude of economic incentive can diminish the incidence of status based discrimination by designing a controlled field experiment in an actual marketplace a reputable arranged marriage market that is conducted via newspaper advertisements the existing literature suggests that this market might be especially prone to strong discriminatory mate selection behavior based on the social identity status of an individual where caste identity of an individual is an easily measured indicator of social status the genesis of this discrimination can be attributed to a high status female s concern for a decline in her social status if she engages in a marital relationship with a low status male against this backdrop we ask whether a low status male could attempt to weaken this enduring form of discrimination by providing systematic economic incentive in the form of high monthly groom incomes to a high status female so that the former s marriage proposal receives preliminary consideration by the latter conditional on both individuals participation in this market the marketplace that we utilize is a well functioning arranged marriage market conducted via matrimonial advertisements in a widely circulated bengali language newspaper marriageable males in this market typically advertise their caste and income information among other attributes after these advertisements appear in the newspaper interested families contact the advertiser mostly in form of detailed letters expressing their interest in that advertisement this provides a confidential and reliable measure of first intent of the interested party in this case females therefore the conjunction of an exceptionally strong status based mate selection behavior a reputed market for arranged marriages and an exclusive correspondence process furnish us with a unique opportunity to investigate the main research hypothesis of our study to the best of our knowledge this is the first field experiment that exclusively focuses on how economic incentives can influence status based discrimination in an actual market 2 to operationalize the experiment we create nine unique matrimonial advertisements each representing a fictitious groom type 3 these potential grooms belong to one of the three blocks where each block contains three grooms from a given caste group we vary the caste status across these blocks we consider three different caste groups high middle and low strictly ranked so in the study region we vary the income features of grooms within a block we consider three different monthly income levels i e high medium and low that are considered feasible for each caste group in the study region furthermore we randomly assign other characteristics relevant for this market to all the potential grooms so that these features on average do not affect the behavior of responders

do women shy away from competition do men compete too much we examine whether men and women of the same ability differ in their selection into a competitive environment participants in a laboratory experiment solve a real task first under a noncompetitive piece rate and then a competitive tournament incentive scheme although there are no gender differences in performance men select the tournament twice as much as women when choosing their compensation scheme for the next performance while 73 percent of the men select the tournament only 35 percent of the women make this choice this gender gap in tournament entry is not explained by performance and factors such as risk and feedback aversion only playa negligible role instead the tournament entry gap is driven by men being more overconfident and by gender differences in preferences for performing in a competition the result is that women shy away from competition and men embrace it

are emily and greg more employable than lakisha and jamal a field experiment on labor market discrimination we study race in the labor market by sending fictitious resumes to help wanted ads in boston and chicago newspapers to manipulate perceived race resumes are randomly assigned african american or white sounding names white names receive 50 percent more callbacks for interviews callbacks are also more responsive to resume quality for white names than for african american ones the racial gap is uniform across occupation industry and employer size we also find little evidence that employers are inferring social class from the names differential treatment by race still appears to still be prominent in the u s labor market jel j71 j64

energy contagion analysis a new perspective with application to a small petroleum economy abstract we put forward the novel concept of energy contagion i e a deepening of energy finance linkages under crisis conditions in energy markets further we show how to construct tests for energy contagion through correlation co skewness and co volatility channels the samples of our contagion measures are defined in terms of calm and crisis periods in the international crude oil market in particular we compare how these various co moments in the energy finance nexus change during 1 oil booms and slumps using semi parametric rule based algorithms 2 tranquil and turbulent oil price volatility episodes using a non hierarchical k means clustering algorithm energy contagion analysis is essential for financial stability analysis in economies where prosperity is linked to the prices of hard commodities our applications are performed on the oil exchange rate and oil stock market relationships of the small petroleum economy of trinidad and tobago the main results show a negative oil real effective exchange rate dependency a weak oil stock returns association and the existence of several energy contagion channels in both financial relationships which are sensitive to the contemporary global financial crash

do gender stereotypes reduce girls or boys human capital outcomes evidence from a natural experiment schools and teachers are often said to be a source of stereotypes that harm girls this paper tests for the existence of gender stereotyping and discrimination by public high school teachers in israel it uses a natural experiment based on blind and non blind scores that students receive on matriculation exams in their senior year using data on test results in several subjects in the humanities and sciences i found contrary to expectations that male students face discrimination in each subject these biases widen the female male achievement difference because girls outperform boys in all subjects except english and at all levels of the curriculum the bias is evident in all segments of the ability and performance distribution and is robust to various individual controls several explanations based on differential behavior between boys and girls are not supported empirically however the size of the difference is very sensitive to teachers characteristics suggesting that the bias against male students is the result of teachers and not students behavior

the rate of return on investment in wine joyce p jacobsen is wine an investment alternative to stocks and bonds first we review prior studies regarding the pecuniary rate of return to wine and other alternatives to financial assets next we calculate the rate of return to holding red bordeaux wine from 1986 to 1996 using a repeat sale regression finally we contrast the financial performance of wine both on an aggregate basis and for various portfolios to that of other asset classes we conclude that wine does not yield greater returns than financial assets especially when the volatility of returns and transaction costs are taken into account jel d44 g12 c43 investments in art and other collectibles are generally deemed profitable but empirical examinations of the relative attractiveness of noncapital good tangible assets relative to financial instruments have shown that art and other collectibles are not sound investments from a financial point of view there is a large body of literature that calculates the rate of return on alternative asset classes and concludes with few exceptions that nonfinancial assets are not good financial investments however in the case of wine the evidence is mixed collectors often maintain that the pecuniary rate of return on investments in wine is comparable to or exceeds investments in stocks and bonds and economists have not reached a consensus vis a vis the relative attractiveness of wine in this article we consider 1 how investment grade wine compares to other alternative asset classes and 2 whether wine might be a viable investment alternative to stocks or bonds first we consider the results drawn from empirical investigations regarding the relative attractiveness of paintings and other collectibles as investments next we review prior econometric evidence regarding the pecuniary rate of return to wine finally we calculate the return on wine from 1986 to 1996 using a repeat sale regression and contrast wine s financial performance both for an aggregate portfolio and for selected submarkets to that of other asset classes i most investments in collectibles cannot be justified as purely monetary there is a virtual consensus in the economic literature of the arts that financial assets dominate less traditional tangible assets as investments because art and other collectibles embody a compensating differential in the form of a user benefit burton and jacobsen 1999 offer a survey of this literature that finds that most quantitative examinations of the markets for art and other collectibles have concluded that the high risk low return characteristics of noncapital good tangible assets effectively proscribe retaining them as financial investments a seminal study by baumol 1986 for example estimated the real annual rate of return on paintings over the period 1652 to 1961 to be only 0 55 frey and pommerehne 1989 who subsequently extended baumol s data set up through 1987 and expanded it by including sales from more countries also concluded that paintings were relatively unattractive investment instruments yielding only about 1 4 between 1635 and 1949 and 1 6 between 1950 and 1987 on an annual inflation adjusted basis more recent studies have only confirmed that investments in other forms of art and collectibles compare unfavorably to investments in traditional financial assets especially when the rate of return is risk adjusted 1 pesando 1993 for example constructed a price index of modem prints over 1977 to 1992 and estimated that the average real annual rate of return on an aggregate print portfolio was only 1 51 well below the concomitant real return on stocks moreover pesando noted that the risk as measured by the standard deviation of real returns associated with investing in prints was comparable to or even exceeded investments in stocks or long term bonds ii but what about wine

gender differences in bargaining outcomes a field experiment on discrimination abstract relying on a commonly used fixed offer bargaining script we examine gender differences in bargaining outcomes in a highly competitive and frequently used market the taxi market in lima peru our bargaining script secures that only the seller can change prices and terminate negotiations thus we are able to examine differences in the seller s entire path of negotiation and in the reservation price at which they are willing to trade we find that male and female passengers who use the same bargaining script are not treated equally men face higher initial prices final prices and rejection rates these differences are consistent with male drivers being more reluctant to give in to demanding negotiations by male passengers and with male passengers being perceived as having high valuations to identify whether taste based or statistical discrimination drives the inferior treatment of men we conduct an experiment where passengers send a signal on valuation before negotiating the signal eliminates gender differences and the response is shown only to be consistent with statistical discrimination thus in the limiting case of a highly competitive market with experienced traders we do not find evidence of taste based discrimination the differential observed is however consistent with statistical discrimination

what to show on the wine labels a hedonic analysis of price drivers of sicilian wines unlike previous literature we construct a hedonic model of wine price that incorporates all the main categories of variables simultaneously to enable a better evaluation of their importance on wine price formation a comprehensive model has the advantage of providing more reliable estimates of the attributes implicit prices thereby facilitating firms pricing and improving effectiveness of wine production and marketing decisions we utilize two different datasets of sicilian wines collecting data from influential wine guides our results suggest that wine price strongly depends on objective features such as vintage alcoholic content geographical origin grape variety producer size and cellaring potential in addition use of containers like tonneaux and barrique positively affects prices whereas use of concrete containers has a negative influence no univocal indications emerge with regard to the effect of the type of company type of viticulture and firm age as for sensorial characteristics our a

prices of american pinot noir wines climate craftsmanship critics pinot noir a variety originating from burgundy in france is the most expensive category of table wine produced in north america this article is aimed at analyzing its price determinants and focuses on climate critical scores and variables related to the winemaker the main findings are as follows 1 pinot noir prices are mainly determined by temperature and precipitation general temperature increases are not beneficial in fact the optimal climate is similar to that in burgundy 2 the second most important variable is the winemaker his or her skill and reputation have a significant impact on prices 3 expert knowledge in the form of critical scores has little explanatory value

expert opinion and the demand for experience goods an experimental approach in the retail wine market abstract the effect of expert opinion on demand for experience goods is difficult to quantify as the relationship between purchases and reviews may be driven by product quality further it is unclear whether a review based demand effect is due to providing quality or existence information using a retail field experiment to overcome these obstacles we find a significant positive average consumer response to expert opinion labels for wine demand decreases for low scoring wines and increases for wines scoring average or higher results indicate that expert opinion labels transmit quality information as opposed to solely shelf visibility

export promotion through exchange rate policy exchange rate depreciation or stabilization exchange rate movements affect exports in two ways rate depreciation and rate variability risk a depreciation raises exports but the associated exchange rate risk could offset that positive effect the present paper investigates the net effect for eight asian countries using a dynamic conditional correlation bivariate garch m model that simultaneously estimates time varying correlation and exchange rate risk depreciation encourages exports as expected for most countries but its contribution to export growth is weak exchange rate risk contributes to export growth in malaysia and the philippines leading to positive net effects exchange rate risk generates a negative effect for six of the countries resulting in a negative net effect in indonesia japan singapore and taiwan and a zero net effect in korea and thailand exchange rate movements affect exports in two ways rate depreciation and rate volatility risk the two effects have received considerable attention since the collapse of fixed exchange rates in the early 1970s but no research considers the net total effect on exports of the two potentially offsetting effects this paper investigates the net effect for eight asian countries with engle s 2002 dynamic conditional correlation dcc bivariate garch m model that simultaneously estimates time varying correlation and exchange rate risk the net effect relates to the goal of a foreign exchange intervention depreciation lowers the foreign currency price of exports and probably increases the quantity of exports and export revenue in domestic currency conditions may exist however where export revenue falls highly inelastic foreign import demand leads to falling export revenue ambiguity also arises if export production incorporates high import content since the domestic cost or price of exports rises with depreciation during periods of appreciation exporters might price to market lowering their domestic currency price to maintain export market share theory and empirical evidence exhibits ambiguity as to the effect of the exchange rate on exports and export revenue junz and rhomberg 1973 and wilson and takacs 1979 find that devaluation

can gender parity break the glass ceiling evidence from a repeated randomized experiment this paper studies whether the gender composition of recruiting committees matters we make use of the unique evidence provided by spanish public examinations where the allocation of candidates to evaluating committees is random we analyse how the chances of success of 150 000 female and male candidates for positions in the four main corps of the spanish judiciary from 1987 to 2007 were affected by the gender composition of their evaluation committee we find that a female male candidate is significantly less likely to be hired whenever she he is randomly assigned to a committee where the share of female male evaluators is relatively greater evidence from multiple choice tests suggests that this is due to the fact that female majority committees overestimate the quality of male candidates

oil price and usd naira exchange rate crash can economic diversification save the naira abstract naira lost half of its foreign exchange value in less than two years following 2014 oil price crash and has not recovered despite numerous government s attempts this study thus evaluated the potential of economic diversification proxied by non oil export performance in saving the naira by analysing a nexus between oil price exchange rate and nonoil export estimation of a rearranged current account equation within autoregressive distributed lag ardl and vector autoregressive var models using monthly data from january 2008 to december 2015 yielded the following results there is a direct relationship between oil price and exchange rate and this affirms that sharp decline in the former induced the latter s deterioration increase in non oil exports led to appreciation of usd naira exchange rate both in the short run and the long run import on the other hand induced depreciation of the exchange rate in the long run diversification by increasing export revenue and reducing import bills therefore has a great potential to improve the value of naira

do quotas help women to climb the career ladder a laboratory experiment abstract women are less likely to enroll in selective or scientific courses applying for promotions and are particularly underrepresented in both middle and top positions in the stem field quota are often advocated as an instrument to reduce this gender gap but it remains unclear at what step of the career ladder they more effectively foster women s reaching the top many factors may affect quota s success or failure such as how they would in turn affect teamwork and trust between members within organizations or coordination in applying for promotions in this paper by means of a laboratory experiment implementing a two stage tournament we evaluate the impact of three different interventions in affecting individual decision to climb the career ladder abstracting away from other possible confounding factors we find that compared with no intervention a gender quota introduced in the initial stage of competition was ineffective in encouraging women to compete for the top quotas introduced in the final stage of competition or at both stages increased women s willingness to compete for the top without distorting the performance of the winners

does job testing harm minority workers evidence from retail establishments because minorities typically fare poorly on standardized tests job testing is thought to pose an equality efficiency trade off testing improves selection but reduces minority hiring we develop a conceptual framework to assess when this trade off is likely to apply and evaluate the evidence for such a trade off using hiring and productivity data from a national retail firm whose 1 363 stores switched from informal to test based worker screening over the course of one year we document that testing yielded more productive hires at this firm raising mean and median tenure by 10 or more consistent with prior research minorities performed worse on the test yet testing had no measurable impact on minority hiring and productivity gains were uniformly large among minority and nonminority hires these results suggest that job testing raised the precision of screening without introducing additional negative information about minority applicants most plausibly because both the job test and the informal screen that preceded it were unbiased

why beauty matters we decompose the beauty premium in an experimental labor market where employers determine wages of workers who perform a maze solving task this task requires a true skill which we show to be unaffected by physical attractiveness we find a sizable beauty premium and can identify three transmission channels a physically attractive workers are more confident and higher confidence increases wages b for a given level of confidence physically attractive workers are wrongly considered more able by employers c controlling for worker confidence physically attractive workers have oral skills such as communication and social skills that raise their wages when they interact with employers our methodology can be adopted to study the sources of discriminatory pay differentials in other settings

sex discrimination in restaurant hiring an audit study in an audit study of sex discrimination in hiring comparably matched pairs of men and women applied for jobs as waiters and waitresses at restaurants in philadelphia in high price restaurants where earnings are higher job applications from women had an estimated probability of receiving a job offer that was lower by about 0 4 and an estimated probability of receiving an interview that was lower by about 0 35 both estimated differentials are statistically significant additional evidence suggests that customer discrimination partly underlies the hiring discrimination

orchestrating impartiality the impact of blind auditions on female musicians a change in the audition procedures of symphony orchestras adoption of blind auditions with a screen to conceal the candidate s identity from the jury provides a test for sex biased hiring using data from actual auditions in an individual fixed effects framework we find that the screen increases the probability a woman will be advanced and hired although some of our estimates have large standard errors and there is one persistent effect in the opposite direction the weight of the evidence suggests that the blind audition procedure fostered impartiality in hiring and increased the proportion women in symphony orchestras

wine market prices and investment under uncertainty an econometric model for bordeaux crus classes this paper describes an econometric assessment of wine market prices for 21 of the crus classes ch teaux in the bordeaux region of france the model developed in the analysis attempt to define the relationship between factors that influence wine quality and those that influence wine prices characteristics of the models are 1 climate influences on grape composition acid and sugar levels 2 grape composition influences on market prices 3 subjective quality evaluations parker points on market prices and 4 the effects of age of the wine on market prices the results indicate that composition levels of merlot dominated wines are more climate sensitive than those from cabernet sauvignon dominated wines overall warm dry summers result in high sugar and low acid levels at harvest which in turn lead to higher quality wines wine market price sensitivity to parker point ratings indicates that properties with high cabernet sauvignon dominated wines are highly dependent on the external ratings while merlot dominated wines have a decreased rating sensitivity smaller properties tend to gain over proportionally from high ratings indicating great jumps in price from year to year additionally ch teaux that have experienced high ratings for past vintages exhibit great sensitivity to point steps in ratings for current vintages aging has a positive effect on bordeaux wine pricing this is due to the increasing maturity as well as the increasing absolute scarcity absolute scarcity of product is expressed by the size of the property with small properties producing less per vintage and therefore having less in the market additionally merlot dominated wines exhibit more maturing potential and profit more from aging than cabernet sauvignon dominated wines average per ch teau real annual profit ranges from 1 to 10 high levels of grape ripeness absolute scarcity and smaller properties that are dominated by merlot in their blend lead to the highest profits forecasts for a vintage not yet on the market indicates that 1995 is better than 1994 for both cabernet sauvignon and merlot dominated wines but that 1996 and 1997 are not as good as 1995 especially for merlot dominated wines 2001 elsevier science b v all rights reserved

optimal contracting with subjective evaluation this paper extends the standard principal agent model to allow for subjective evaluation the optimal contract results in more compressed pay relative to the case with verifiable performance measures moreover discrimination against an individual implies lower pay and performance suggesting that the extent of discrimination as measured after controlling for performance may underestimate the level of true discrimination finally the optimal contract entails the use of bonus pay rather than the threat of dismissal hence neither efficiency wages nor the right to dismiss an employee are necessary ingredients for an optimal incentive contract

field experiments of discrimination in the market place controlled experiments using matched pairs of bogus transactors to test for discrimination in the marketplace have been conducted for over 30 years and have extended across 10 countries significant persistent and pervasive levels of discrimination have been found against non whites and women in labour housing and product markets rates of employment discrimination against non whites in excess of 25 have been measured in australia europe and north america a small number of experiments have also investigated employment discrimination against the disabled in britain and the netherlands and against older applicants in the united states

bending the pipeline executive search and gender inequality in hiring for top management jobs we study the sources of women s underrepresentation in hiring for top management jobs by focusing on the context of executive search using data that include proprietary information on 10 970 individuals considered by a search firm we examine the sources of the low proportion of women placed in senior roles contrary to received wisdom we find limited evidence that demand side screeners strongly contribute to gender disadvantage in this setting what gender differences exist tend to play out at the start of the hiring process and are driven both by supply side and demand side actors once considered for a position women are no less likely than men to be hired though they are slightly less likely to be interviewed by the search firm our findings highlight the theoretical importance of disentangling candidates self steering behavior from the pipeline bending of hiring agents we discuss the implications of our results for understanding gender inequality at upper echelons of the labor market this p

how costly is diversity affirmative action in light of gender differences in competitiveness affirmative action is often criticized for causing reverse discrimination and lowering the qualifications of those hired under the policy however the magnitude of such adverse effects depends on whether the best suited candidate is hired absent the policy indeed affirmative action may compensate for the distortion discrimination imposes on the selection of candidates this paper asks whether affirmative action can have a similar corrective impact when qualified individuals fail to apply for a job we evaluate the effect of introducing a gender quota in an environment where high performing women fail to enter competitions they can win we show that guaranteeing women equal representation among winners increases their entry the response exceeds that predicted by the change in probability of winning and is in part driven by women being more willing to compete against other women the consequences are substantial as the boost in supply essentially eliminates the anticipated costs of the policy this paper was accepted by uri gneezy behavioral economics

the evolution of male female earnings differentials in canadian universities 1970 2001 the evolution of academic salaries and the gender earnings gap in canadian universities is analysed using a unique statistics canada data set containing detailed information on all full time teachers at canadian universities over the period 1970 through 2001 male salaries declined across cohorts while female salaries remained stable consequently male female earnings differentials have narrowed recent years have also seen increasing variation in academic salaries for both men and women a gender earnings gap remains the bulk of which can be explained by differences in men s and women s rank and field the unexplained earnings gap has decreased over time on analyse l evolution des salaires et l ecart entre hommes et femmes dans les universites canadiennes entre 1970 et 2001 a l aide d une base de donnees unique de statistiques canada qui contient des renseignements detailles sur tous les professeurs a temps plein des universites canadiennes les salaires des hommes ont decline au fil des cohortes pendant que ceux des femmes demeuraient stables ce qui fait que les differentiels de salaires se sont amenuises au cours des annees recentes on a observe une variabilite croissante des salaires academiques tant pour les hommes que les femmes un ecart entre hommes et femmes persiste qui est attribuable aux differences dans les rangs et dans les champs d activites des hommes et des femmes l ecart qui demeure inexplique a diminue dans le temps

college advising and gender this paper uses a field experiment to identify college advising gender biases five hundred and thirty surveys are randomized over a national sample of practicing advisors such that student gender is the treatment of the experiment i find that advisors discount the ability of female students relative to males by statistically significant magnitudes in both mathematics and english additionally male advisors recommend mathematics with much greater likelihood than do female advisors jel i2 j16

does exchange rate risk affect exports asymmetrically asian evidence abstract this paper tests the hypothesis of asymmetric effects of exchange rate risk with a dynamic conditional correlation bivariate garch 1 1 m model the asymmetry means that exchange rate risk volatility affects exports differently during appreciations and depreciations which may reflect exporter s asymmetric risk perception and hedging behavior using bilateral exports from eight asian countries to the us the real exchange rate risk significantly affects exports for all countries negative or positive in periods of depreciation or appreciation thus policy makers can consider the stability of the exchange rate in addition to its depreciation as a method of controlling export growth

longitudinal analyses of the effects of trade unions but union members are different from nonmembers in unobserved ways biasing your estimates y ou should make a selectivity bias correction simultaneously determine union status and economic outcomes develop an unobservables model use longitudinal data archetypical comment on virtually any study of the economic effects of umomsm or suitably modified on any other empirical subject

behavioural heterogeneity in wine investments we introduce a heterogeneous agent model to explain the dynamics of fine wine investments our results show evidence of the existence of both fundamentalists those who trade on mean reversion tow

wine retail price dispersion in the united states searching for expensive wines similar to other markets in which deviations from jevons law of one price is the norm rather than the exception the retail wine market in the united states is characterized by large price dispersions drawing on a large sample of retail prices from wine searcher com we find an average per wine coefficient of variation of 23 percent some of this is due to differential market conditions especially state regulations our evidence suggests that dispersion also depends positively on price levels after controlling for consumer market and state heterogeneity

on the origins of gender gaps in human capital short and long term consequences of teachers biases abstract we estimate the effect of primary school teachers gender biases on boys and girls academic achievements during middle and high school and on the choice of advanced level courses in math and sciences during high school in tel aviv israel we measure bias using class gender differences in scores between school exams graded by teachers and national exams graded blindly by external examiners for identification we rely on the random assignment of teachers and students to classes in primary schools our results suggest that assignment to a teacher with a greater bias in favor of girls boys has positive effects on girls boys achievements such gender biases have also positive impact on girls boys enrollment in advanced level math courses in high school these results suggest that teachers biased behavior at early stages of schooling has long run implications for occupational choices and earnings at adulthood because enrollment in advanced courses in math and science in high school is a prerequisite for post secondary schooling in engineering computer science and so on

exchange rate pass through abstract the pass through relationship between exchange rate and prices of manufactured exports is examined for korea it is found that exporters take competitors prices at the prime mover of price setting and let profits bear the brunt of adjustment to the exchange rate changes

pricing to market behaviour and exchange rate pass through in japanese exports this paper examines the relationship between exchange rate changes and japanese export pricing behavior employing a methodology which permits the separate measurement of pricing to market behavior and the cost impact of exchange rate changes the results suggest that incomplete pass through of exchange rate changes is a pervasive phenomenon but rejects the widely held view that japanese export firms have relied more heavily on pricing to market strategies during the period of yen appreciation in order to maintain market shares there is also evidence that estimates which capture only pricing to market behavior may over emphasise the degree of pass through to the extent that cost of production is sensitive to exchange rate changes copyright 1994 by royal economic society

the good the bad and the different can gender quotas raise the quality of politicians the debate over political gender quotas is unduly confined to a supposed trade off between diversity and competence we characterize the effects of a political gender quota in a citizen candidate model to find that quotas do increase the overall quality of those elected whenever the rewards from public office are high or the skill premium or political gender discrimination are sufficiently low in such cases high skill women candidates run for office in sufficiently high numbers driving off low skill male and female candidates our model compares quotas with other policies in terms of their impact on the number and quality of those elected

nonemployment stigma as rational herding a field experiment abstract long spells of unemployment are known to reduce the likelihood of re employment but it is difficult to discern the reasons for this observation using an experimental method that controls for search intensity and possible discouragement of job applicants i document that job market opportunities for the nonemployed diminish rapidly over time in this experiment duration dependence is solely due to firm perceptions why do firms view long spells of nonemployment as negative signals rational herding is one important factor managers believe that unemployed applicants were previously interviewed and if the applicants were productive they would have been hired

does equal pay legislation reduce labour market inequality this paper considers a labour market model of monopsonistic competition with taste based discrimination against minority workers to study the effect of equal pay legislation on labour market inequality when the taste for discrimination is small or competition is weak the policy removes job segregation and the wage gap completely however with a bigger taste for discrimination or stronger competition equal pay legislation leads to more job segregation and sometimes minority workers end up earning less than before profits of discriminating firms might increase and discrimination can persist in the long run although it would have disappeared without the policy

cultural proximity and loan outcomes we present evidence that shared codes religious beliefs ethnicity cultural proximity between lenders and borrowers improves the efficiency of credit allocation we identify in group preferential treatment using dyadic data on the religion and caste of bank officers and borrowers from a bank in india and a rotation policy that induces exogenous matching between officers and borrowers cultural proximity increases lending on both intensive and extensive margins and improves repayment performance even after the in group officer is replaced by an out group one further cultural proximity increases loan dispersion and reduces loan to collateral ratios our results imply that cultural proximity mitigates informational problems that adversely affect lending which in turn relaxes financial constraints and improves access to finance

will a shrink make you richer gender differences in the effects of psychotherapy on labour efficiency this paper provides a first theoretical and empirical analysis of the effects of psychotherapy on individual productivity we build a simple model in which a deterioration of mental health endogenously causes a decrease in productivity which is counterbalanced by psychotherapy we test our hypotheses on the british household panel survey data we find that individuals suffering from mental health problems benefit economically from consulting a psychotherapist moreover we find that the returns are higher for men than for women even though women are more likely to seek help

women and power unpopular unwilling or held back we use spain s equality law to test for the existence of agency problems between party leaders and their constituents the law mandates a 40 percent female quota on electoral lists in towns with populations above 5 000 using pre and postquota data by party and municipality we implement a triple difference design we find that female quotas resulted in slightly better electoral results for the parties that were most affected by the quota our evidence shows that party leaders were not maximizing electoral results prior to the quota suggesting the existence of agency problems that hinder female representation in political institutions

exchange rate appreciation and export competitiveness the case of singapore policy prescriptions have generally assumed that exchange rate depreciation would stimulate exports and curtail imports while exchange rate appreciation would be detrimental to exports and encourage imports this prediction has however often neglected to consider the existence of the import content of exports as well as the dynamic effects of productivity improvements our paper seeks to show empirically the significance of these two factors in affecting the competitiveness of singapore s exports specifically the paper shows that in the presence of high import content exports are not adversely affected by currency appreciation because the lower import prices due to appreciation reduce the cost of export production in the case of singapore this cushioning effect outweighs that of the effect of productivity gains on export competitiveness the service exports however with a very low import content tend to suffer from currency appreciation

hiring preferences in online labor markets evidence of a female hiring bias online labor marketplaces facilitate the efficient matching of employers and workers across geographical boundaries the exponential growth of this nascent online phenomenon holds important social and economic implications as the hiring decisions made on these online platforms implicate the incomes of millions of workers worldwide despite this importance limited effort has been devoted to understanding whether potential hiring biases exist in online labor platforms and how they may affect hiring outcomes using a novel proprietary data set from a leading online labor platform we investigate the impact of gender based stereotypes on hiring outcomes after accounting for endogeneity via a holistic set of job and worker controls a matched sample approach and a quasi experimental technique we find evidence of a positive hiring bias in favor of female workers an experiment was used to uncover the underlying gender specific traits that could influence hiring outcomes we find that the observed hiring bi

networks in the modern economy mexican migrants in the u s labor market this paper attempts to identify job networks among mexican migrants in the u s labor market the empirical analysis uses data on migration patterns and labor market outcomes based on a sample of individuals belonging to multiple origin communities in mexico over a long period of time each community s network is measured by the proportion of the sampled individuals who are located at the destination the united states in any year we verify that the same individual is more likely to be employed and to hold a higher paying nonagricultural job when his network is exogenously larger by including individual fixed effects in the employment and occupation regressions and by using rainfall in the origin community as an instrument for the size of the network at the destination

endophilia or exophobia beyond discrimination the discrimination literature treats outcomes as relative but does a differential arise because agents discriminate against others exophobia or because they favour their own kind endophilia using a field experiment that assigned graders randomly to students examinations that did did not contain names we find favouritism but no discrimination by nationality nor by gender we are able to identify these preferences under a wide range of behavioural scenarios regarding the graders that endophilia dominates exophobia alters how we should measure discriminatory wage differentials and should inform the formulation of anti discrimination policy

bargaining sorting and the gender wage gap quantifying the impact of firms on the relative pay of women there is growing evidence that rm specic pay premiums are an important source of wage inequality these premiums will contribute to the gender wage gap if women are less likely to work at high paying rms or if women negotiate worse wage bargains with their employers than men using longitudinal data on the hourly wages of portuguese workers matched with balance sheet information for rms we show that the wages of both men and women contain rm specic premiums that are strongly correlated with employer productivity we then show how the impact of these rm specic pay dierentials on the gender wage gap can be decomposed into a combination of bargaining and sorting eects consistent with the bargaining literature we nd that women receive only 90 of the rm specic pay premiums earned by men notably we obtain very similar estimates of the relative bargaining power ratio from our analysis of between rm wage premiums and from analyzing changes in

gender bias and credit access we extract an exogenous measure of gender bias from survey responses by descendants of u s immigrants on questions about the role of women in society we then use data on around 6 000 small business firms from 17 countries and find that in high gender bias countries female entrepreneurs are more likely to opt out of the loan application process and to resort to informal finance even though banks do not appear to actively discriminate against them these results are not driven by credit risk differences between female and male owned firms or by any idiosyncrasies in the set of countries in our sample

the harder the task the higher the score findings of a difficulty bias studies have found that going first or last in a sequential order contest leads to a biased outcome commonly called order bias or primacy and recency studies have also found that judges have a tendency to reward contestants they recognize with additional points called reference bias controlling for known biases we test for a new type of bias we refer to as difficulty bias which reveals that athletes attempting more difficult routines receive higher execution scores even when difficulty and execution are judged separately despite some identification challenges we add to the literature by finding strong evidence of a difficulty bias in gymnastics we also provide generalizations beyond athletics jel l10 l83 d81 j70 z1

viewpoint male female wage differentials how can that be abstract the paper outlines the main empirical procedures that are used to document the male female wage differential and the extent to which it reflects discrimination it then discusses the evidence on male female wage differentials their existence the extent to which they reflect discrimination their changes over time and the factors that influence the gap particular attention is paid to more recent studies that control for a wider range of conventionally unobserved factors theoretical perspectives are then outlined focusing on the issue of how discriminatory wage differentials can survive given the forces of competition the impacts of policy initiatives are also discussed

chipping away at the glass ceiling gender spillovers in corporate leadership this paper examines the role of women helping women in corporate america using a merged panel of directors and executives for large u s corporations between 1997 and 2009 we find a positive association between the female share of the board of directors in the previous year and the female share among current top executives the relationship s timing suggests that causality runs from boards to managers and not the reverse this pattern of women helping women at the highest levels of firm leadership highlights the continued importance of a demand side glass ceiling in explaining the slow progress of women in business

gender and job performance evidence from wall street this study concerns the relationship between gender and job performance among brokerage firm equity analysts women s representation in analyst positions dropped from 16 percent in 1995 to 14 percent in 2005 the study found significant gender based differences in performance on various dimensions for example women cover roughly 9 stocks on average as compared with 10 for men and women s earnings estimates tend to be less accurate than men s estimates but the study also found that women are significantly more likely than men to be designated as all stars which indicates that they outperform men in other aspects of job performance

the aversion to lying abstract we experimentally investigate the effect of cheap talk in a bargaining game with one sided asymmetric information a seller has private information about her skill and is provided an opportunity to communicate this information to a buyer through a written message four different treatments are compared one without communication one with free form communication and two treatments with pre specified communication in the form of promises of varying strength our results suggest that individuals have an aversion towards lying about private information and that the aversion to lying increases with the size of the lie and the strength of the promise freely formulated messages lead to the fewest lies and the most efficient outcomes