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Welcome to the external seminar page of the LEM laboratory (Lille Economie Management - UMR 9221).
The seminar takes place on Tuesdays from 4:30pm to 5:30pm in the Salle du conseil - building SH2 - Cité Scientifique campus in Villeneuve d'Ascq (access: metro M1, stop "Cité Scientifique - Professeur Gabillard"; site map), and online on Zoom.
Organizers: Marie Pierre Dargnies, Ekaterina Borisova (ekaterina.borisova[at]univ-lille.fr) and Julien Benistant (julien.benistant[at]univ-lille.fr)
Program for the year 2025-2026
September 30
José De Sousa, University of Paris Panthéon-Assas (Webpage)
Title: Gender Homophily and Feedback in Teams (with P. Madies)
Abstract: We study how feedback affects gender homophily in teams. In a lab experiment, participants endogenously form teams for a real effort task. The salience of individual errors varies across treatments, and one treatment allows partners to send messages after errors occur. We find no gender differences in overall performance, but clear differences in homophily. While men show no homophily, women more often choose female partners, a pattern driven entirely by the highest-performing women. We investigate these results by examining gender differences in beliefs, satisfaction, and fear of negative evaluation.
October 14
Juan de Dios Tena Horrillo, University of Liverpool (Webpage)
Title: Balancing Today and Tomorrow: Determinants and Consequences of Task Allocation in European Football
Abstract: This paper examines how firms allocate tasks between young and senior workers, focusing on elite football as a setting where these decisions are directly observable. Using match-level data from the five largest European leagues between the 2011–12 and 2022–23 seasons, we implement a two-stage empirical strategy that exploits quasi-random variation from calendar-related events. In the first stage, we study the determinants of playing time for young players. We show that their inclusion is discouraged in high-stakes matches, particularly for those without prior experience, but is modestly encouraged by fixture congestion and player absences. In the second stage, we aggregate this exogenous variation to examine the consequences for team performance. The short-run effects are small: fielding inexperienced players slightly worsens results, while experienced players have negligible immediate impact. The long-run effects are more pronounced. Strategic use of experienced players improves subsequent performance, whereas inexperienced players contribute positively mainly when circumstances beyond the club’s control force their inclusion. These findings reveal a structural tension between managers’ short-term incentives and clubs’ long-term interests, and underscore the importance of policies that account for how experience shapes the value of investing in young talent in superstar industries.
November 4
Korhan Koçak, IE University (Webpage)
Title: Sequential Updating
Abstract: On many contentious topics, decision makers’ beliefs fail to converge—or continue to polarize—despite exposure to a high number of signals. They exhibit the backfire effect, holding onto their initial beliefs even more strongly when presented with evidence to the contrary. The first piece of information in a series often acts as an anchor, and thus has an excessively high weight in posteriors. Based on recent findings on working memory, this paper proposes a cognitively less demanding yet ultimately incorrect way to update beliefs that accounts for these deviations from Bayesian Updating. If a signal is informative on multiple dimensions, the order with which beliefs are updated across dimensions leads to different posteriors. The unifying model advanced by this paper shows that polarization is possible under common priors and common signals, and suggests new avenues of research for a better understanding of how information is processed by individuals, as well as how persuasion occurs.
November 25
Jarko Fidrmuc, Zeppelin University (Webpage)
Title: The Motherhood Wage Gap in the EU – A Meta-Analysis
Abstract: We analyze the motherhood wage gap defined as the differences in wages between mothers and childless women, in the European Union. Our meta-analysis synthesizes the results of 20 studies and 710 estimates of the motherhood wage gap across 23 European countries. On average, mothers in the EU earn 4.7% less than childless women. After accounting for a significant negative publication bias, the true effect is only slightly lower (penalty of approximately 3.71%). Additionally, there is high cross-country variation, with Germany showing an exceptionally high motherhood wage gap, whereas mothers in Belgium do not earn significantly less than non-mothers. Meta-regressions indicate that the wage gap is related to mothers’ career breaks after childbirth and employer discrimination against mothers. After controlling for significant control variables, countries in Southern Europe appear to have the lowest wage penalties, or possibly even a wage premium, while Eastern European countries have the biggest penalties.
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