Welcome to my website!
I am an applied microeconomist who specializes in empirical labor economics.
I am an Assistant Professor of Economics at Vienna University of Economics and Business.
I graduated from University of Warwick in 2021 with a PhD in Economics.
Email: roberto.asmat@wu.ac.at
Working Papers
"Competing for Equality: Gender Bias Among Juries in International Piano Competitions, 1890–2023" with K. Borowiecki and M. Law
Revise and resubmit at the American Economic Journal: Applied Economics
Do women benefit from being judged by women? Using data on 5,000 piano competitions (1890--2023), involving 40,000 competitors and 8,000 jurors, we find the opposite: a one-standard-deviation increase in the share of female jurors reduces a female pianist’s chances of reaching the finals by five percent, the podium by nine percent, and winning by 12 percent. We then use jurors’ career histories to explore mechanisms. The pattern is concentrated among female jurors who were former winners of competitions of similar prestige, consistent with perceived threats in segmented labor markets. Our study suggests that economic incentives can drive biases in evaluation.
"Should I Stay or Should I Go? The effect of internal migration for university studies on educational trajectories and labor market outcomes" with G. Gaete, J. Montalban and N. Navarrete
This paper estimates the impact of students’ internal migration for pursuing university studies on their educational and early labor market outcomes using rich administrative data from Chile. Using a regression discontinuity design based on centralized university admission cutoffs, we compare marginal students induced to migrate from their high school commuting zone (CZ) with those induced to remain there. We find that, right after admission, students induced to migrate are roughly four times as likely to enroll in a university outside their high school CZ as those not induced to migrate. We find no significant differences in dropout rates ten years after high school completion, although migrant students take longer to graduate, largely due to return migration and re-enrollment. Although average labor market outcomes fourteen years after high school completion are similar, heterogeneous effects emerge: students with higher ability or stronger destination-based peer networks are less likely to return to their high school CZ and experience better labor market outcomes. Moves to areas with better labor market opportunities also appear to lead to higher earnings. These findings highlight the importance of non-pecuniary factors in shaping migration returns and suggest that the gains from educational mobility accrue primarily to well-connected and academically stronger students.
Publications
"Gender Differences in Judicial Decisions under Incomplete Information: Evidence from Child Support Cases" with L. Kossuth
Journal of Development Economics. Vol 179, February 2026
We study gender differences in child support rulings by judges in cases where defendants (fathers) may work in either the formal or informal sector. Our identification strategy exploits the random assignment of cases to courts presided over by individual judges. We find that female judges award child support amounts that are 0.18 standard deviations lower than those awarded by male judges. When focusing on defendants working in the informal sector (who constitute over 70% of the cases), the gap appears to stem from female judges’ greater skepticism toward what they perceive as inflated claims by plaintiffs, influencing their beliefs about defendants’ earnings. We further explore four potential mechanisms behind the gap that also include formal cases: bias against female plaintiffs, workplace masculinization, interactions with other judge characteristics, and differences in legal objectives. We do not find conclusive statistical support for these mechanisms.
"Do experts and laypersons differ? Some evidence from international classical music competitions" with K. Borowiecki and M. Law
Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization. Vol 214, October 2023
Do experts and laypersons differ in their judgments of quality? We investigate this question in the context of classical music performance, taking advantage of the fact that in many international music competitions, lay audiences as well as expert juries award prizes. Using novel data on 370 competition-editions held between 1979 and 2021, we find that jury and audience preferences match only 38% of the time. We then explore gender bias and host country bias as possible explanations for the divergence between jury and audience judgments by comparing first prizewinners and audience prizewinners with other finalists. Additionally, we use the fact that many musicians compete repeatedly to examine the predictive value of prizewinning on success in future competitions. We find that being female and being from the competition host country are negatively correlated with the likelihood of being the jury's top choice but have no relationship with the likelihood of winning an audience prize. Additionally, winning an audience prize predicts winning future competitions but being ranked first by the jury does not. Importantly, our findings extend the literature on the value of expert opinion to a new setting, using an explicitly non-expert counterfactual.