Work In Progress:
Self-Promotion in Job Applications (Draft available upon request)
I examine how self-promotion—measured as self-reported skill levels on a 0-10 scale impacting job prospects—varies according to individual characteristics and is influenced by strategic concerns. Using an incentivized survey experiment simulating an early-stage application form, I find that women, on average, self-report lower skill levels compared to men, conditional on actual ability. This gender gap is prominent in assessments of logical thinking skills and less pronounced in evaluations of English skills. By implementing an information intervention that informs participants about upcoming tests following their self-reported skill levels, I manipulate the scope for strategic concerns in self-reporting skills. In response to these variations, the gender gap appears to be stable. The results of this paper suggest that differences in self-promotion by socioeconomic status (SES), on the other hand, are largely associated with strategic considerations. Absent the treatment, there is no significant SES gap, given equal performance. However, individuals with high SES tend to provide substantially lower self-reported scores when anticipating skill assessment tests, while low-SES participants display consistently stable self-reported scores in comparison.
Mental Models of High School Success (Draft available upon request)
with Robert Mahlstedt, Pia Pinger, Sonja Settele and Helene Willadsen
Students with more educated parents and girls commonly achieve higher school grades, even conditional on past performance. We study adolescents' perceptions of systematic performance differences in upper secondary education, based on a sample of 15-year-olds in the final year of Danish elementary school who face their first own school track choice. Quantitative GPA differences are perceived with reasonable accuracy on average, masking considerable heterogeneity. Open-text survey responses reveal that adolescents attribute gender differences in performance largely to meritocratic factors, such as effort, motivation, and skills. In contrast, a perceived "high SES advantage" is attributed exclusively to external factors like parental support. Social environments seem to matter in shaping mental models: Adolescents exposed to a higher local gender gap in labor market incomes are more likely to perceive a "boy advantage" and a higher upward social mobility experienced by the family shifts mental models towards a "low SES advantage". Finally, mental models matter for enrollment decisions: A larger perceived "girl advantage" is associated with higher success expectations among girls, and a higher likelihood to choose upper secondary education, while a larger perceived "high SES advantage" seems to discourage low-SES students.