Anja Prummer
I am a Lecturer at Queen Mary University of London and a Research Affiliate at CEPR.
Previously, I was a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Cambridge-INET Institute, University of Cambridge. I received my Ph.D. from the European University Institute, Florence.
My research interest is Applied Micro Theory with applications to Culture, Gender and Political Economy.
Email: a.prummer@qmul.ac.uk
CV (November 2020)
Publications
Network Structure and Performance (with Ilse Lindenlaub)
Online Appendix, Media Coverage: Marketplace, EurekaAlert
The Economic Journal, forthcoming
Micro-Targeting and Polarization
Journal of Public Economics 2020
with Lorenzo Ductor and Sanjeev Goyal
Chapter in Women in Economics A CEPR Vox eBook, edited by Shelly Lundberg 2020
Religious and Cultural Leaders
Chapter in Advances in the Economics of Religion, Palgrave Macmillan 2019
with Fabrizio Panebianco and Jan-Peter Siedlarek
Journal of Economic Theory 2018
Community Leaders and the Preservation of Cultural Traits
Online Appendix, Media Coverage: Zeeconomics
with Jan-Peter Siedlarek
Journal of Economic Theory 2017
Working Papers
Gender and Collaboration (with Lorenzo Ductor and Sanjeev Goyal) R&R Review of Economics and Statistics
Online Appendix , this version: December 2020
The fraction of women in economics has grown significantly over the last forty years. In spite of this, the differences in research output between men and women are large and persistent. These output differences are related to differences in the co-authorship networks of men and women: women have fewer collaborators, collaborate more often with the same co-authors, and a higher fraction of their co-authors are co-authors of each other. Moreover, women collaborate more and do so with more senior co-authors. Standard models of homophily and discrimination cannot account for these differences. We discuss how differences in risk aversion and an adverse environment for women can explain them.
Media Coverage: Voxeu, Times Higher Education (and what we really said to Times Higher Education), CTN Newsletter, Nada es Gratis, The Economist
Discrimination in Promotion (with Francesco Nava)
this version: November 2020
Does an employer benefit from inducing differential valuations for a promotion among his workers? In our setting, workers compete by exerting effort and higher effort corresponds to higher profit for the employer. Competition is more intense if workers have the same value distribution for the promotion. However, introducing inequalities makes workers' value more easily recognisable, reducing their information rent, which in turn increases effort. We show that if value is re-distributed, the reduction in information rent outweighs the loss in competitiveness, making discrimination between workers optimal.
Astrological Beliefs and Marriage Outcomes (with Francesca Cornaglia and Veruska Oppedisano)
Draft available on request
We document empirically that astrology influences marriage decisions: we find a higher share of astrologically compatible couples among all those who are married. This effect can be explained by Google search trends. In areas with a higher search for astrological compatibility, more astrologically compatible couples get married. Do these marriages last? Although astrology is a pseudo-science, it may well be that those believing their partner is the best possible match ignore contradictory evidence and display a confirmation bias. We document that astrologically compatible couples are more likely to get divorced, finding no evidence for confirmation bias, but instead for a model of rational updating.
Whom to Lobby? Targeting in Political Networks (with Thomas Groll)
this version: June 2015
We study lobbying in a setting in which decision-makers share resources in a political network. Two opposing lobby groups choose which decision-maker they want to target with their resource provision, and their decision depends on the ideological bias of the decision- makers as well as the network structure. We characterize the optimal lobbying strategies in various network settings and show that a higher resource flow as well as homophily, the phenomenon that like-minded individuals are directly connected to each other, reinforce decision-makers’ ideological bias. Our analysis highlights that lobbyists can gain political influence well beyond the benchmark of no lobbying and their lobbying payoffs and competitive advantages depend on the decision-making networks they face. We then show that our findings are consistent with empirically observed lobbying patterns.