Research

Preventing sexual assault on university campuses is rooted in promoting the adoption and practice of seeking consent. Using identity theory and a factorial vignette survey experiment, we test for the presence of implicit differences in appropriateness ratings based on context, gender, race and sexual orientation and, in aggregate, differences in social norms that govern college students’ sexual interactions. We provide a simple theoretical framework of statistical discrimination where the social norms for identical actions are predicted to differ because the appropriateness of actions is imperfectly observed and evaluators hold beliefs about underlying propensities of appropriate action that are rooted in identity. Our results show that context significantly alters perceptions of appropriate behavior and that heterosexual male actions are viewed as systematically less socially appropriate. We validate our findings with a post-study questionnaire which reveals that beliefs regarding appropriateness ratings are largely driven by the perceived rates of sexual assault among the represented population by the vignette narrator. The paper advances the study of norms rooted in identity and presents an identity-based theoretical framework that provides intuition for how such a differences may arise. 

Summer Youth Employment Programs are known to have significant impacts on youth outcomes based on lotteries from oversubscribed programs. But most cities cannot use a lottery design due to heterogeneity across youth and jobs. How can programs achieve efficiency and equity under alternative assignment mechanisms? Using hiring platform data, we study youth application and employer selection behavior to explore these design challenges. We find large mismatches between the distribution of youth versus jobs leaving 10% to 25% of positions unfilled. Moreover, employers were nearly twice as likely to select white youth relative to their representation in the applicant pool. This disparity persisted when controlling for other demographics, the number and timing of applications, and job readiness. Our findings reveal that workforce development programs may perpetuate inequities in the absence of simple random assignment. Using a job matching algorithm, we show that placing just 30% of positions by lottery can improve both equity and efficiency. 

Transfers of resources in dictator games vary significantly by the characteristics of recipients. We focus on social norms and demonstrate that variation in the recipient changes both giving and injunctive norms and may offer an explanation for differences in giving. We elicit generosity using dictator games, and social norms using incentivized coordination games, with two different recipient types: an anonymous student and a charitable organization. A within-subjects design ensures that other factors are held constant. Our results show that differences in giving behavior are closely related to differences in social norms of giving across contexts. Controlling for individual differences in beliefs about the norm, subjects do not weight compliance with the norms in the student recipient or charity recipient dictator game differently. These results suggest that the impact of context on giving co-occurs with an impact on social norms.

Introduction: Most work on social identity, defined as one's sense of self derived from membership to social groups, focuses on a single identity and its behavioral consequences. But a central insight of social identity theory is that people belong to multiple social groups, derive self-esteem from multiple identities and care to conform to the norms for those identities. However, very little work has turned its attention to understanding when and how multiple social identities interact. We motivate hypotheses with a framework that extends a social identity model to include multiple identities.

Methods: Using a longitudinal sample (N > 600) of university students located primarily in Texas and throughout the US, we use university social identity, and the associated university norms, to characterize COVID related social distancing norms between April and October of 2020 and then unpack how another identity, the student's political identity, impacts perception of those norms.

Results: Despite incentives to do otherwise, we find that beliefs about university norms differ depending on the respondent's political identity. We interpret this as a spillover effect of attitudes from one identity to another.

Discussion: We relate our results back to a model of social identity, to the literature on spillovers where such psychological spillovers are hard to empirically identify, and to methods for future work on identity and spillovers.

This paper explores how default options influence perception of the social norm though changes in tipping behavior where consumers can use a suggested default or manually enter a tip amount. To identify the impact suggested tip levels have on behavior, I take advantage of the variation of credit payment vendors within the New York City taxi industry. Using both timing of the payment screen installations and variation across taxis in the technology vendor, I find that a five percentage point increase in the default tip percentages results in decreased default selection, albeit an increase in frequency of manual tips. Furthermore, I find that this increase is significantly greater for individuals who place relatively lower weight on their norm belief. This research demonstrates how the interaction of implicit social norms and cognitive costs together explain the `trade-off' phenomenon within the default literature where following an increase in defaults, the propensity to leave a default contribution decreases while the average contribution increases. The results of this research provides a practical perspective for firms considering the implementation of default suggestions.

Previous research in economics, social psychology, and sociology has produced compelling evidence that social norms influence behavior. In this paper we apply the Krupka and Weber (2013) norm elicitation procedure and present U.S. and non-U.S. born subjects with two scenarios for which tipping and punctuality norms are known to vary across countries. We elicit shared beliefs by having subjects match appropriateness ratings of different actions (such as arriving late or on time) to either another random subject or to a subject from their native country. We also elicit personal beliefs without the matching task. We test whether the responses from the coordination task can be interpreted as social norms by comparing responses from the coordination game with ex-ante identified social norms. We compare responses elicited with the matching tasks to those elicited without the matching task to test whether the coordination device itself is essential for identifying social norms. We find that appropriateness ratings for different actions vary with the reference group in the matching task. Further, the ratings obtained from the matching task vary in a manner consistent with the ex-ante identified social norms of that reference group.  Thus, we find that shared beliefs correspond more closely to externally validated social norms compared to personal beliefs. Second, we highlight the importance that reference groups (for the coordination task) can play.

In 2016, Congress created the Cyber Excepted Service (CES) and granted the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) flexibilities when setting compensation to support the recruitment and retention of personnel who are critical to the DoD cyber warfare mission. To justify a market-based permanent pay adjustment, there must be evidence that existing compensation is insufficient to attract and retain a required number of qualified employees. A persistent labor shortage signifies that compensation is insufficient and can be identified by high employee turnover or difficulty in filling posted vacancies.

In this report, the authors analyze the labor demand and supply for seven DoD cyber work roles that were collectively identified as high priority by the service components and the Office of the DoD Chief Information Officer (CIO). The authors provide a framework for adjusting pay according to economic theory, identify private-sector occupational counterparts for the seven work roles, discuss findings from DoD employment and compensation questionnaires completed by CES organizations, compare characteristics and life-cycle pay between DoD cyber civilians and their private-sector counterparts, and make recommendations for the DoD CIO when setting compensation policy.

Reincarceration rates in the United States are extremely high. One reason that individuals coming out of prison may find it difficult to avoid criminal activity is that they face significant barriers to obtaining legal employment. As such, lowering the barriers to employment following a criminal record could help break the reincarceration cycle. In 2012, Ohio introduced a method for prior offenders to signal their rehabilitative status, namely through obtaining a Certificate of Qualification for Employment (CQE). Although such certificates of rehabilitation are available in 16 states, much less is known about their rehabilitative effects. Using individual-level CQE petition records, we implement a judge-IV estimation strategy to estimate the causal effect of obtaining a CQE on subsequent crime. In addition to convictions, we also analyze the effect of CQEs on subsequent bookings at the county-level. This project will be one of the first to provide causal estimates of how judicial certificates affect recidivism.

Florida is currently one of only a handful of states that does not restore civil rights upon completion of a sentence for felons. Instead, persons with a prior felony conviction must apply for civil rights restoration through a constitutionally authorized process known as clemency. Civil rights revocation not only revokes the right to vote, but also denies eligibility of certain occupational licenses and state-funded scholarships. Over the past 26 years, the Rules of Executive Clemency have been amended such that approval became automatic for those eligible between 2007 to 2011. Outside of this time period, however, clemency required an application, hearing, and a mandatory waiting period. It is unknown, a priori, if such policy changes influenced labor market outcomes, voting behavior, or educational attainment, any of which may affect incentives for convicted felons to re-offend. As an aggregate measure of these channels, I analyze the casual link between civil rights restoration and rates of recidivism. To establish causality, this paper uses changes in the Rules of Executive Clemency affecting ex-felons' ability to restore their civil rights in order to identify the impact of civil rights restoration on rates of recidivism.

This study analyzes the influence of suggestions on tip amounts, tip percentages, the probability of selecting a default option, and manual tip amounts. More specifically, this paper looks at how varying tip suggestions either in dollar amounts versus percentages influences outcomes of interest. The study utilizes a unique dataset provided from a local coffee shop. As the Square point of sale platform changes tip prompts discontinuously at the $10 threshold, I employ a regression discontinuity model to evaluate the influence of a change in tip prompts.