title: Diversity in Organizations: Essays in Applied Economics Based on Experimental and Administrative Data
Creators: name: Mayer, Lea
Publisher: name: Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg (FAU)
Year: 2024

description: The thesis consists of three chapters that study gender and nationality diversity in different organizations using causal methods. The first chapter investigates the impact of refugee and foreign students on secondary education track choices in Germany, especially after the European refugee crisis in 2015-2016. The quick increase in the share of refugees in German schools could potentially harm educational outcomes of students. The study uses a large administrative dataset from Bavaria to explore how the share of refugee and immigrant peers in a cohort influences the secondary educational track choices of native Germans, refugees, and other foreigners. The analysis uses a within-school fixed-effects model to address biases arising from school selection. This method exploits the quasi-random variation in the share of refugees and other foreigners among cohorts. My main findings reveal positive effects of the refugee share on Germans' secondary school choices, negative effects on refugees, and limited impact on other foreigners during the years 2015-2018. These effects persist in various robustness checks. Further examination of non-refugee foreigners reveals that the share of foreigners with their own citizenship or language negatively impacts their secondary school choices, suggesting social separation within the class. While the available data limits an analysis of the mechanisms behind the positive impact of the refugee share on Germans, additional insights from further data and the literature suggest as potential factors the changes in teachers' reference points and parental preferences for their children's peers. This chapter contributes to the existing literature on peer effects of immigrants, offering insights of an exceptionally large influx of refugees to Germany. The second chapter studies the preferences of highly educated individuals regarding gender diversity in the workplace. While extensively discussed aspects of jobs, include flexibility and competitiveness, gender diversity among co-workers has received limited attention. The chapter aims to understand if women's stronger preferences for gender diversity contribute to their underrepresentation in top positions, potentially influencing career choices. We conducted a stated choice experiment involving over 9,000 participants, including undergrads and graduate students, PhD students, and non-tenured and tenured professors in Germany. Participants made choices between hypothetical job offers varying in the wage and non-wage amenities, most importantly for this chapter the percentage of women among co-workers (10%, 25%, or 40%). Results reveal a substantial valuation of a more gender-diverse work environment among high-profile co-workers. Notably, women exhibit twice the willingness-to-pay for gender diversity compared to men. Heterogeneity analyses show that more career-ambitious and competitive individuals have lower valuations of gender diversity. Women maintain anyhow high valuations when having high levels of competitiveness or ambition. Surprisingly, family preferences only impact the valuations of men. The gender gap in willingness-to-pay for gender diversity is attributed to homophily in co-workers' gender preferences or expectations about a more employee-friendly and less competitive environment with increased gender diversity. Women may also benefit from reduced gender stereotypes and less sexual harassment in a diverse setting. The chapter contributes to understanding the persistence of the gender gap in high-earning jobs by providing a detailed analysis of preferences for gender diversity among co-workers, incorporating current decade data and including top earners like professors. The third chapter analyzes the impact of gender composition on team performance and communication. With the increasing prevalence of diverse work teams, it is crucial to understand how these teams function and leverage the skills of all members. The study utilizes an online experiment, randomly assigning individuals to teams of four, either all-male, all-female, or mixed-gender composition. The teams collaborate in an online audio chat room to solve non-routine business problems, which we tested for gender neutrality in individual performance. The design ensures that communication is essential for problem-solving. The primary findings reveal that all-male teams exhibit higher communication levels, particularly on topics related to the task, and outperform both mixed and all-female teams in solving problems. The data suggests that the increased communication in all-male teams may drive their enhanced performance. Moreover, in gender-mixed teams, men speak significantly more than in all-male teams, while women adjust their communication behavior in the opposite direction, resulting in a significant gender gap. The gender gaps in mixed teams persist even between low-ability men and high-ability women. Further evidence indicates that the differences are not attributed to a more aggressive style, as sentiments and interruptions are similar in homogeneous and mixed teams. Instead, the findings suggest that gender-specific communication behaviors, influenced by self-confidence and existing gender roles, contribute to male dominance in mixed teams. The socially acquired nature of gender-specific communication behaviors emphasizes the importance of early recognition and amplification of women's voices in teams. The study contributes valuable experimental evidence to the literature, offering a systematic analysis of style and quantity of communication in teams based on their gender composition. To summarize, this thesis uses causal methods to find new evidence of how diversity in organizations affects the outcomes and decisions of individuals. The gained insights from experimental methods and administrative data may contribute to the ongoing debate on how organizations in e.g. policy, education and the private sector can reach diversity and use its full potential.