Mastodawn

Discrimination Preferences https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:crm:wpaper:26125&r=&r=exp
"… #moral preferences are highly heterogeneous and the moral #discrimination preferences we introduce are widespread. We identify minorities of individuals with tastes for.…and large majorities with preferences against taste discrimination
… substantial shares with merit-based preferences for statistical discrimination…as well as against statistical discrimination
… discrimination is sensitive to profitability, but only 21% of individuals are pure profit maximizers on average, and moral preferences remain highly relevant. When taste discrimination becomes profitable, a sizable minority is swayed to engage in it… but 75% forgo earnings by refusing to engage in it. When instead it becomes profitable to engage in statistical discrimination, most are enticed to engage in it… Nevertheless, 32% forgo earnings by refusing to engage in statistical discrimination. The bulk of statistical discrimination with monetary incentives here stems from merit concerns rather than profit maximization. This is because about half of individuals statistically discriminate on #merit grounds even without monetary incentives to do so
.… while merit may justify rejecting taste discrimination of groups with equal merit, it also justifies statistical discrimination under incomplete information"
#ExperimentalEcon

Dennis Alexis Valin Dittrich May 14

Firm Pay, Amenities, and Inequality https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:35149&r=&r=bec
"Non-wage attributes are an important driver of job choice: workers frequently choose lowerpaying offers. Amenity valuations are highly dispersed across firms and approximately orthogonal to wages, so amenities do not offset between-firm pay differences. In money-metric units, the signal variance of amenities is about one-third that of wage premia. Conditional on the wage, high-amenity firms tend to be larger, have lower quit rates, and are more favorably reviewed by employees. Amenity preferences vary across demographic groups. Men and women do not value the same firms equally: the correlation between their firm-specific valuations is 0.239. Women work at firms that pay less. They also work at firms that offer them higher amenity value. Using gender-specific valuations, women do not work at firms that offer them lower overall value. In some specifications, they work at firms that offer more."
#LaborMarkets #wages #ExperimentalEcon #gpg

Dennis Alexis Valin Dittrich Apr 27

Choice Architecture in Occupational Choices
http://repec.business.uzh.ch/RePEc/iso/leadinghouse/0255_lhwpaper.pdf
This study uses a Swiss job board to analyze how rank order and design influence high-stakes occupational choices. Higher rankings increased applications, especially for high-paying and gender-congruent occupations. Users interpreted rank to justify choices aligning with identity, providing field evidence for motivated reasoning. An interactive, visually enriched interface redesign boosted applications and watch list usage. Results show that reducing cognitive load expands the variety of options individuals consider and remember.
#choicearchitecture #motivatedreasoning #laborEconomics #jobtech #ExperimentalEcon
#BoundedRationality

Dennis Alexis Valin Dittrich Apr 27

Human–AI Evaluation and Gender Transparency: Application Decisions in Competitive Hiring
https://docs.iza.org/dp18517.pdf
#AI involvement deters applicants, particularly women, across both pure algorithmic and hybrid human-in-the-loop regimes. This effect is driven by non-competitive candidates; non-competitive women apply least despite receiving the strongest objective evaluations under AI assessment. Competitive men exhibit #overconfidence -driven selection, while competitive women remain resilient and well-calibrated under AI assessment. Notably, randomizing candidate #gender disclosure does not significantly impact application behavior in any evaluation category.
#hiring #llms #algorithmaversion #LaborMarkets #jobtech #ExperimentalEcon

Dennis Alexis Valin Dittrich Apr 22

A Job I Like or a Job I Can Get: Designing Job #RecommenderSystems Using Field Experiments https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:arx:papers:2603.21699&r=&r=exp
"… welfare-optimal RSs rank vacancies by an expected-surplus index, and shows why rankings based solely on utility, #hiring probabilities, or observed application behavior are generically suboptimal
… Algorithms informed by the model-implied optimal ranking substantially outperform existing approaches and perform close to the welfare-optimal benchmark.

While the joint application-and-hiring probability is not welfare-optimal in theory, it emerges as a strong empirical benchmark in our setting. This result is structural rather than algorithmic: application probabilities are empirically small and remain so even under recommendation rules designed to stimulate applications
… rankings based solely on application behavior are theoretically fragile
… Machine-learning tools can substantially improve matching outcomes, but only when embedded in a framework that defines the economic objective and disciplines behavioral assumptions with experimental evidence. Without such a framework, RSs optimized for observable behaviors may perform well on predictive metrics yet remain misaligned with welfare-relevant outcomes."
#LaborMarkets #jobtech #socialWelfare #ExperimentalEcon

Dennis Alexis Valin Dittrich Feb 4

Everyone Take Copies https://www.econlib.org/econlog/everyone-take-copies/
"… discs: Non-rivalrous goods are goods that can be used by multiple people without any loss to the other users. If participants exercise the ability to take a disc, then the original disc holder still has a disc and can still consume the full value of it.
… Participants discuss discs often enough to reveal how they conceptualize the resource. In many instances, they articulate the positive-sum logic of zero-marginal-cost copying. For example, … farmer Almond reasons, “ok so disks cant be stolen so everyone take copies,” explicitly rejecting the application of “stolen” to discs.
… Humans can state that digital piracy is illegal and take measures to prevent it. However, it will be difficult to cause an individual engaging in piracy to feel guilty as they do when they believe they are directly harming another human."
#economics #IntellectualProperty #ExperimentalEcon #ExperimentalLaw

Everyone Take Copies - Econlib

I have a new working paper with Bart Wilson titled: “You Wouldn’t Steal a Car: Moral Intuition for Intellectual Property.” The title of this post, “everyone take copies,” comes from a conversation between the human subjects in an experiment in our lab, on which the paper is based. The experiment was studying how and when […]

Econlib

Dennis Alexis Valin Dittrich Jan 17

Delegating in the Age of AI: Preferences for Decision Autonomy https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:rco:dpaper:558&r=&r=eur
"… participants systematically underutilize both #AI and human agents, even when those agents outperform them. Despite a general hesitancy to delegate, we observe a clear preference for delegating to AI rather than human agents, a behavioral pattern that remains consistent across both decision domains and architectures
… suggesting that algorithm aversion stems primarily from a broader aversion to relinquishing control rather than from specific distrust towards AI
… If individuals are driven primarily by general reluctance to relinquish control rather than specific distrust in AI, then #transparency alone, focused narrowly on increasing #trust in AI, will likely fall short of overcoming this barrier."
#ExperimentalEcon #BoundedRationality

Dennis Alexis Valin Dittrich Oct 28, 2025

How do monetary incentives affect the measurement of social preferences? https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:zur:econwp:482&r=&r=exp
"… the use of monetary #incentives, as well as the size of the stakes, have little impact on choices at the descriptive levels, as well as for the identification of qualitatively distinct preferences types. They appear to matter, however, for the quantitative identification of the strength and the precision of social preferences.
… the #socialPreferences of the general population are likely overestimated when elicited with hypothetical stakes. If one is solely interested in having a rough, descriptive measure of social preferences at the aggregate level, or if one wants to identify qualitatively distinct preferences types, then relying on hypothetical stakes might suffice.
… if one is interested in making a quantitative assessment of subjects’ other-regardingness, e.g., in order to make quantitative predictions, then our result suggest that using monetary incentives is advisable,
… no evidence that using a larger stake size improves the identification of social preferences"
#ExperimentalEcon #BehavioralEconomics

Dennis Alexis Valin Dittrich Sep 26, 2025

Social Risk, Fairness Types, and Redistribution https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ces:ceswps:_12128&r=&r=cbe
"…find individuals exhibit significantly less tolerance for #inequality stemming from social risk — where outcomes depend on another person’s choice to reciprocate or betray — than from natural risk — where outcomes depend on brute #luck. This aversion to inequality born of social interdependence is driven by a greater likelihood of redistribution, rather than more intensive transfers.
… identify a novel #fairness type, which we term Insurer, who consistently compensate individuals who take risks but incur losses. This type is especially prevalent when outcomes hinge on others’ choices, suggesting that the interpersonal nature of risk shapes moral reasoning about fairness.

The heightened preference for #redistribution in trust-based environments points to public demand for social #insurance mechanisms that address harms arising from social, as opposed to purely idiosyncratic or market-based, risks."
#ExperimentalEcon #BehavioralEconomics

Dennis Alexis Valin Dittrich Sep 23, 2025

Against the Standard https://archiv.ub.uni-heidelberg.de/volltextserver/36879/8/Cubel_Against_dp764_2025.pdf
"… in the absence of feedback, women are less likely than men to benchmark their performance against a standard of excellence. This is inefficient because women who are likely to obtain increased rewards choose a low reward scheme instead.
… When feedback is provided and the standard is set by peers, this gender gap closes. However, the gap re-emerges, and even widens, when the standard of excellence is set by experts.
… If standards are set by experts and committees are perceived as male-dominated, a gender gap will exist in the award of promotions, grants or recognition. Understanding the differential impact of standards and feedback provision can help to design more inclusive competitive processes and bridge gender gaps in labour market outcomes."
#ExperimentalEcon #LaborEconomics #wages #gpg #LaborMarkets