Welcome!

About myself

I am a postdoctoral associate at  the Center for Behavioral Institutional Design (C-BID), at New York University Abu Dhabi. I obtained a PhD Cum Laude in Economics at Department of Economics of Maastricht University in September 2021.  

I will be on the Economics Job Market, 2024-2025 (JMP).

My research primarily explores the intersections of Experimental and Behavioral Economics with a focus on gender dynamics. In my work, I use both student samples in lab settings and large, online representative samples. I focus on two main areas: (1) exploring the determinants of gender disparities in the labor market, including factors like the attribution of blame and credit for team outcomes and gender differences in bargaining and competitive behavior, and (2) developing experimental tools to measure economic preferences and beliefs, while examining their interactions with other behavioral traits and demographic characteristics.

You can download my full CV here.

Contact Information

Email: lina.lozano@nyu.edu

Center for Behavioral Institutional Design (C-BID)

New York University Abu Dhabi

Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates

Working papers

1. Gender Differences in Attribution Across Strategic and Non-Strategic Settings - [Job Market Paper]

Link to Job Market Paper

This paper examines whether a gender gap exists in how men and women attribute success and failure to themselves or others, and if these differences persist under strategic incentives. In a series of online experiments, participants justify outcomes in a knowledge quiz, where responsibility can be attributed to their own ability or another’s, and individual contributions are unobservable. Results show that women are more likely to blame themselves for failures and less likely to take credit for successes compared to men. This gender gap in attribution persists even when strategic incentives are introduced by sharing attributions with a potential employer, and it remains significant after accounting for performance and beliefs—becoming stronger among top performers. The gap also affects hiring decisions and earnings, with employers favoring those who shift blame and take credit. Finally, when workers' gender is revealed, the earnings gap reverses, driven by preferential treatment for hiring women rather than anticipated attribution differences.

2. (Re)Measuring Preferences for Competition (with Ernesto Reuben)

Link to working paper 

Submitted at Management Science, November 2024

This study investigates individuals' competitive behavior. We present two experiments designed to evaluate the consistency of individuals' choices to compete, obtain direct measures of their preferences for competition, and evaluate the stability of these preferences over time. We find strong evidence that many individuals are willing to forgo a significant portion of their expected earnings to either engage in or avoid competition. Additionally, their choices are consistent with expected utility maximization, and are relatively stable over time. Preferences for competition vary with the number of competitors but we do not find significant differences by gender.

3.. The Impact of the Menstrual Cycle on Bargaining Behavior (with Arno Riedl and Christina Rott)

Link to working paper

 Reject-Resubmit at the Economic Journal, July 2024

We investigate experimentally how the menstrual cycle affects bargaining behavior and bargaining outcomes of women. Female participants negotiate in an unstructured bilateral bargaining game with asymmetric information about the allocation of a surplus ('pie size'). We find that the menstrual cycle affects bargaining behavior and that the effects depend on players’ information. Players who are informed about the pie size are less compromising during ovulation and receive higher payoffs conditional on reaching an agreement. Uninformed players achieve higher final payoffs during ovulation, which is mainly driven by higher agreement rates. Our study provides first evidence that biological factors affect bargaining.

 4. Estimating Preferences for Competition from Convex Budget Sets  (with Ernesto Reuben)

(Working paper available upon request)

Recently, the literature in experimental economics has linked the laboratory measurement of preferences for competition with labor market outcomes and educational choices. If preferences for competition are an important determinant of behavior, it is crucial to develop an accurate approach to measure them. In this study, we test whether preferences for competition can be rationalized by a utility function and develop a framework for the joint treatment of preferences for competition and risk. Our design improves on previous work in that it generates a rich data-set of individual-level choices. This allows us to test whether choices to enter tournaments are consistent with GARP and to estimate with a high degree of certainty the extent to which these choices are explained by a pure taste for competition. Our findings provide strong evidence of a pure preference for competition at individual level, that can be captured both by an additive and curvature term in the utility function. Also, we observe that risk and competition are structurally associated, which suggests that ignoring such a relation between both traits can bias the estimation of preferences for competition. 

Book chapters

Lozano, L., Ranehill, E., Reuben, E. (2022). Gender and Preferences in the Labor Market: Insights from Experiments. In: Zimmermann, K.F. (eds) Handbook of Labor, Human Resources and Population Economics. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-57365-6_118-1

Despite increased female educational attainment and labor market participation, labor markets around the world remain characterized by vertical and horizontal gender segregation. This chapter reviews recent findings from the experimental economics literature that shed light on some of the causes of gender differences in labor market outcomes. First, it reviews the recent literature using incentivized measures of attitudes toward risk and competition to study the extent to which gender differences in these traits help explain gender differences in educational and career choices as well as earnings. Second, it reviews the experimental literature on gender differences in negotiations. Third, it concludes by discussing the recent experimental literature on gender discrimination, emphasizing beliefs about productivity as the mechanism leading to differential hiring of men and women. Experiments are a powerful tool to explain gender differences in labor markets as they create controlled environments where causal links can be derived and exact mechanisms can be identified.


Work in Progress


1. Fairness promotes Efficiency in a Coordination Dilemma with Redistribution (with Andrzej Baranski and Nikos Nikiforakis)

(Manuscript in preparation)

We investigate behavior in a weakest-link game with ex post redistribution to understand how surplus-sharing negotiations impact coordination. Although the addition of a bargaining game may complicate coordination due to the inherent payoff uncertainty, surplus-sharing negotiations can potentially be used to reward contributors equitably. Our experimental results show that subjects achieve substantial efficiency gains relative to the canonical game with an equal split of the surplus, where contributions unravel towards the least efficient outcome. A virtuous cycle emerges, with equitable sharing and contributions reinforcing each other, surprisingly in a setting absent repeated interactions. In a second study, we investigate the role of distributive and risk preferences on contributions, by sorting subjects by gender. Although both men and women agree on equitable distributions on the surplus, women display more inclusive behavior while men are more likely to exclude the lowest contributors. As a result, there is a stronger correlation between contributions and shares received in all-male groups but both genders experience similar increases in efficiency. The minor level difference is best explained by risk attitudes. In sum, we find a positive relationship between equitable sharing and contributions, suggesting a causal link between equity and efficiency in a classical coordination dilemma. 


2. Signals of Consent (with Georgia Michailidou) 


Violations of sexual consent are painful for the victims and disturbing for society. While cases of assault and harassment present important variations, a common feature often emerges in courtrooms. A victim and an accused acknowledge that a sexual encounter took place, but they disagree on whether that was mutually consensual. Depending on the jurisdiction, two models are typically applied in rulings over such cases. One is the affirmative consent (“yes means yes”) model, the other is the negative consent (“no means no”) model. The two models overlap in that they both require a conscious expression of a signal; a yes or a no. However, they differ in how they treat the absence of a signal, i.e., in the role they assign to silence. While the affirmative model suggests that silence cannot be an indication of consent, the negative model proposes that silence is not an indication of withdrawn consent. To study the complexities of silence, we construct a theoretical and experimental paradigm where silence exists as a communication strategy between a consent giver and a consent taker. We extend the paradigm to consider environments similar to those produced by the affirmative and negative legal frameworks and we discuss their welfare implications considering consent violations, missed matches, and false accusations. 


3. Global Stereotypes (with Moritz Janas,  Robert Stüber, Nikos Nikiforakis, and Ernesto Reuben)


Multiple projects from incentivized experiments conducted with 65,000 participants in 70 countries. This project explores global stereotypes by eliciting traits (such as dishonesty, competitiveness, and abstract thinking) and beliefs about these traits in various subgroups, including men/women, old/young people, and high/low-income people.


4. Eliciting thresholds for Conspicuous Consumption (with Moritz Janas,  Nikos Nikiforakis, and Simon Siegenthaler)


5. Committee formation, identity signaling and allocation of scholarships: a field experiment (with Manu Munoz)

Recent and upcoming presentations 

RECENT

PAST


Teaching

Economic Games (Maastricht University)

This a 3rd year bachelor course that teaches students to design, conduct, and analyze data from economic experiments using experimental methods, equipping them with practical skills for independent research.

Principal instructor.

Years: 2021

Economic Psychology (Maastricht University)

This a 3rd year bachelor course that provides structured insights into the important roles of psychological factors and processes in judgment and decision-making of economic agents.

Principal instructor.

Years: 2021

Understanding Society (Maastricht University)

This a 2nd/3rd year bachelor course that uses economic theories and empirical research to analyze  social phenomena.

Principal instructor.

Years: 2020

Managerial Economics (Maastricht University)

This a 2nd/3rd year bachelor course that applies microeconomic principles such as game theory predictions to managerial issues.

Principal instructor.

Years: 2018, 2019, 2020

Principles in Microeconomics and Macroeconomics (Maastricht University)

This a 1st year bachelor course that introduces basic principles and key economic concepts in microeconomics and macroeconomics to European Studies students.

Principal instructor.

Years: 2017, 2019

Economics and Business (Maastricht University)

This a 1st year bachelor course that introduces basic principles and key economic concepts in microeconomics and macroeconomics to Economic and Business students.

Principal instructor.

Years: 2017

An Economist's Point of View (Maastricht University)

This a 1st year bachelor course that introduce how economic thought has evolved historically. 

Principal instructor.

Years: 2017