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.  

My research primarily explores the intersections of Experimental and Behavioral Economics with a focus on gender dynamics. I investigate topics such as attribution biases, stereotypes, sexual consent, the impact of risk attitudes and beliefs on individuals’ competitive behaviors, and bargaining behavior. My interests extend to gender economics, applied microeconomics, and social identity, where I seek to understand the underlying patterns that influence economic decisions and workplace dynamics.

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

Recent and upcoming presentations 

UPCOMING

PAST


Working papers

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

Link to working paper

Recent research has found that competitive behavior measured in experiments strongly predicts individual differences in educational and labor market outcomes. However, there is no consensus on the underlying factors behind competitive behavior in these experiments. Are participants who compete more capable, more confident, and more tolerant of risk, or are they competing because they enjoy competition per se? In this study, we present an experiment designed to measure individuals' preferences for competition. Compared to previous work, our experiment rules out risk preferences by design, measures beliefs more precisely, and allows us to measure the magnitude of preferences for competition. In addition, we collect multiple decisions per participant, which lets us evaluate the impact of noisy decision-making. We find strong evidence that many individuals possess preferences for competition. Most participants are either reliably competition-seeking or competition averse, and their choices are highly consistent with expected utility maximization. We also find that preferences for competition depend on the number of competitors but not on the participants' gender.

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

Link to working paper

Bargaining is omnipresent, for instance, in market transactions, at the workplace, and before intra-household agreements. Recent evidence suggests that the sex hormones characterizing the female menstrual cycle influence women's behavior in different environments. However, little is known about the link between the menstrual cycle and negotiations. In this paper, we examine whether the menstrual cycle influences women's bargaining behavior and bargaining outcomes. In an experiment, participants play an adapted version of a dynamic unstructured bilateral bargaining game with private information. While the distribution of the pie size is common knowledge, only one bargaining partner (informed) knows the actual pie size. Our findings suggest that the menstrual cycle and information play an important role: During the ovulation phase, informed women are less compromising and offer a smaller part of the pie to the bargaining partner compared to the other menstrual phases. These differences translate into significantly higher payoffs (conditional on reaching a deal) during the ovulation phase. Although the bargaining behavior of uninformed women does not change over the menstrual cycle, their bargaining outcomes captured by overall payoffs and deal rates improve during ovulation. Finally, women become better negotiators with experience, independent of the menstrual phase and the information environment. Overall, our findings suggest that both, biological factors and the environment, play an important role in determining women’s bargaining behavior and outcomes and that negotiating can be learned.

 3. 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. 

Work in Progress


1. Attribution Narratives of Failure and Success in Strategic Settings

(Manuscript in preparation)


During our educational and professional lives, we face failures and successes that we need to justify to ourselves and others. In most cases, failure and success are the results of an unknown combination of both internal factors (i.e., own ability and exerted effort) and external factors that are outside one’s control (i.e., others or luck). The evidence suggests that when people attribute the causes of failure and success, they often exhibit a "self-attribution bias" -attribute success to their merit and failure to external sources- to maintain self-esteem. In this project, we study an additional reason for the self-attribution bias, a strategic one. We use an online experiment to test how individuals attribute noisy feedback when the source of the outcome can be due to their ability or someone else’s ability. In addition, following recent evidence on gender differences in attribution biases, we also test whether men and women use different failure and success justifications and study the consequences of it in a hiring context. Understanding the nature and economic consequences of gender differences in attribution of failures/successes is crucial, as it could be one of the causes of the observed gender gaps in the labor market such as the under-representation of women in top-level positions.



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


3. Efficiency in a Generalized Coordination Dilemma (with Andrzej Baranski and Nikos Nikiforakis)


4. Signals of Consent (with Georgia Michailidou) 


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

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.


Teaching

Understanding Society (Maastricht University)

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

Principal instructor.

Years: 2020

Managerial Economics (Maastricht University)

This a 2nd/3rd year bachelor course that applies microeconomic principles to managerial issues.

Principal instructor.

Years: 2018, 2019

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


Co-authors