Search

We consider in this paper whether the gender mix at the level of decision-makers in firms can influence gender representation at the employee level. We run a laboratory experiment whereby we present a pair of independent employers with applications from two potential employees. We consider whether the gender of the other employer will influence an employer´s hiring decision. We find that the gender mix among employers plays a role in the individual hiring decisions of female members. Female employers when paired with a male employer are more likely to choose a female applicant over an equally competent male applicant. Results of an Implicit Association Test (IAT) and answers to a post-experimental questionnaire show that explicit beliefs about relative gender performance are significantly associated with the observed hiring bias, while implicit attitudes do not appear to play a role.

How malleable are people's fairness ideals? Although fairness is an oft-invoked concept in allocation situations, it is still unclear whether and to what extent people's allocations reflect their fairness ideals. We investigate in a laboratory experiment whether people's fairness ideals vary with respect to changes in the order in which they undertake two allocation tasks. Participants first generate resources in a real- effort task and then distribute them. In the partial allocation task, the participant determines the earnings for himself and another participant. In the impartial allocation task, the participant determines the earnings for two other participants. We also manipulate the participants' experience, i.e., whether they took part in similar allocation experiments before. We find that participants are more likely to allocate more resources to themselves than what they earned in the real-effort task when they decide partially. Exclusively for inexperienced participants, deciding impartially first dampens selfish behavior when they decide partially.

Although the role of formal and informal institutions in promoting economic growth and sustaining exchange relations is now well established, explaining and differentiating how informal and formal rules affect individual behavior remain a challenge. This study aims to distill the essential characteristics of formal and informal institutions and disentangle their effects on trust and performance in exchange relations through a laboratory experiment. Formal institutions are modeled as third-party contract enforcement while informal institutions are represented as shared group identity. Results show that trust choices increase as contract enforcement increases but are not affected by shared group identity. However, performance is more likely to occur in interactions with in-group members than out-group members.

Human capital formation during youth, aside from the individual qualities of the student, is dependent in part on the quality of the schooling background. The determinants of academic performance of students (measured by their grade in the introductory economics course in the University of the Philippines) are studied taking into account the student's pre-collegiate endowment of knowledge and various factors associated with the high school of graduation. The study affirms that individual student ability is the main building block of academic performance in the university. The high school of graduation is a secondary factor if at all important. Talent distribution in the country is widely distributed across the country and those who get admitted into the university are filtered through a stringent entrance examination score that has major components in science, mathematics, reading and language comprehension come from the small group of bright outliers from this population of high school graduates. There is a strong indirect link to the quality of the high school background. When the entrance test score is used as the dependent variable, the high school background plays an important role. The average performance of high schools from the Metro Manila regions is better than those from other regions of the country. In the same manner high schools from well-funded first class cities perform very well compared to those from less financially endowed cities. These findings indicate that the quality of funding and the level of development of the community in which the high school is located are contributory factors to the student's performance when they seek admission into the university.