Publications

ABSTRACT

This article reviews the literature investigating the role of physical appearance in shaping economic outcomes and summarizes the recent advances on the topic of physical attractiveness and perceptions of one’s appearance from articles included in the 2024 Special Issue of the Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization on the Economics of Beauty.  

LINK TO THE SPECIAL ISSUE

KEYWORDS

Beauty premium; Discrimination

CITATION

Shtudiner, Ze’ev, Olga Shurchkov, and Daniel Hamermesh. 2024. “Pulchronomics Today: Advances in the Economics of Beauty,” Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, 220, 691-696.

Online Appendix

ABSTRACT

We design an experiment to study gender differences in reactions to editorial decisions on submissions to top economics journals. Respondents read a hypothetical editor’s letter where the decision (e.g., revise and resubmit) is randomized across participants. Relative to an R&R, female assistant professors who receive a rejection perceive a significantly lower likelihood of subsequently publishing the paper in any leading journal than comparable male assistant professors. We do not find this gender difference among tenured professors. We consider several mechanisms, pointing to gender differences in attribution of negative feedback to ability and confidence under time constraints as likely explanations.

KEYWORDS

Gender differences; Feedback; Publication; Economic experiments 

CITATION

Shastry, Gauri Kartini, and Olga Shurchkov. 2024. “Revise or Reject: Gender Differences in Persistence and Publishing in Economics,” Economic Inquiry, published online April 02, 2024.

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Online Appendix

ABSTRACT

We design a survey experiment to investigate the effect of intervention with diversity on preferences for diverse outcomes. First, subjects report their perceptions of archetypical occupations boss, professor, nurse, and clerk, rating boss/professor as higher status than nurse/clerk. Importantly, while respondents expect overrepresentation of women among nurses and clerks, they expect a relatively equal gender distribution among bosses and professors. We then randomize participants to view either diverse or non-diverse images for each occupation.  Diversifying the image sets significantly increases the likelihood of underrepresented individuals being selected in both domains, but correctness of preexisting beliefs only matters in female-typed domains.

KEYWORDS

diversity, gender differences, economic experiments

CITATION

Flory, Jeffrey, Leibbrandt, Andreas, Shurchkov, Olga, Stoddard, Olga, and Alva H. Taylor. (2023) “Perceptions of Gender Diversity in Occupations” American Economic Association, Papers & Proceedings, forthcoming. 

Ungated version

Online Appendix

ABSTRACT

Using an online real-effort experiment, we investigate whether and how delaying competition affects the individuals’ willingness to compete.   Unlike our prior, we find that men and women are equally likely to compete in our baseline no-delay condition, with a task considered to be gender-neutral. We discuss how the gender gap in entry rates does not appear to be omnipresent, but instead depends on circumstances and beliefs.  Men are significantly more likely than women to provisionally sign up for a delayed tournament when a future opportunity to study for the task is available; however, this difference in rates is evanescent, disappearing when the actual choice is made later.  Women who have access to studying see an increase in performance, while men do not.  Delaying competition by itself does not generate a gender gap in competitiveness.  We explore a variety of potential reasons for why knowing one has access to studying produces the gender gap in tournament entry.  We rule out differences in risk aversion, confidence, and task stereotypes. Control treatments where the delay itself is a choice rule out the possibility that the forced nature of delay may be at the root of the overly competitive initial decisions by the men.  We conjecture that these patterns may arise due to men being more confident than women and making choices based on an overly ambitious view about future selves’ ability to study.

KEYWORDS

Gender differences; Competition; Intertemporal choice; Economic experiments 

CITATION

Charness, Gary, Dao, Lien, and Olga Shurchkov. 2022. “Competing Now and Then: The Effect of Delay and the Vanishing Gender Gap in Competitiveness.” Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, 198, June 2022, 612-630.

NBER Working Paper Version

IZA Working Paper

CESifo Working Paper

Online Appendix

ABSTRACT

The COVID-19 pandemic created unexpected and prolonged disruptions to childcare access. Using survey evidence on time use by academic researchers before and after the pandemic, we analyze the extent to which greater access to either school-based or partner-provided childcare mitigated the severe disruptions to research observed among parents during COVID-19. We find that access to public schools offset the research time loss to a greater extent among mothers of young children relative to fathers, narrowing the emerging post-pandemic gender gap. Having a stay-at-home partner reduced the disruptions to research time equally for both genders.

KEYWORDS

gender differences, COVID-19, academia

Ungated version

Online Appendices (A-F)

Online Appendices (G-I)

ABSTRACT

We explore how groups deliberate and decide on ideas in an experiment with communication. We find that gender biases play a significant role in which group members are chosen to answer on behalf of the group. Conditional on the quality of their ideas, individuals are less likely to be selected in gender incongruent domains (i.e. male-typed domains for women; female-typed domains for men). Individuals are also less likely to promote themselves when they are in the gender minority within their group. These patterns are not well-explained by objective or subjective differences in conversational behavior, nor by differences in beliefs about idea quality. Our results seem most consistent with a preference for promoting and rewarding group members in a way that conforms with gender norms.

KEYWORDS

Gender Differences; Stereotypes; Teams; Economic Experiments

CITATION

Coffman, Katherine B., Clio Bryant Flikkema, and Olga Shurchkov. "Gender Stereotypes in Deliberation and Team Decisions." Games and Economic Behavior (forthcoming).

NBER Working Paper version

Online Appendix

ABSTRACT

The rapid spread of the COVID-19 pandemic and subsequent countermeasures, such as school closures, the shift to working from home, and social distancing are disrupting economic activity around the world. As with other major economic shocks, there are winners and losers, leading to increased inequality across certain groups. In this project, we investigate the effects of COVID-19 disruptions on the gender gap in academia. We administer a global survey to a broad range of academics across various disciplines to collect nuanced data on the respondents’ circumstances, such as a spouse’s employment, the number and ages of children, and time use. We find that female academics, particularly those who have children, report a disproportionate reduction in time dedicated to research relative to what comparable men and women without children experience. Both men and women report substantial increases in childcare and housework burdens, but women experienced significantly larger increases than men did.

KEYWORDS

gender differences, COVID-19, academia

CITATION

Deryugina, Tatyana, Olga Shurchkov, and Jenna Stearns. 2021. "COVID-19 Disruptions Disproportionately Affect Female Academics." AEA Papers and Proceedings, 111: 164-68.

DOI: 10.1257/pandp.20211017

Full Text

Online Appendix

ABSTRACT:

We design an experiment that sheds light on the asymmetry in how men and women interpret noisy feedback about relative standing and how this gender difference can affect tournament entry. Women attribute negative feedback to lack of ability, even when the feedback is due to bad luck. High-ability men who receive negative feedback correctly attribute it to luck. Men attribute negative feedback to lack of ability only when it confirms prior beliefs. We find consistent gender differences in tournament entry: noisy feedback eliminates the gender gap but primarily because low-performing men opt out of tournament. High-performing women who receive surprising negative feedback reduce tournament entry, generating a gender gap in performance and earnings relative to the setting without feedback.

KEYWORDS

Gender differences; Competition; Attribution; Feedback; Economic experiments

CITATION

Shastry, Gauri Kartini, Olga Shurchkov, and Lingjun Lotus Xia. 2020. "Luck or skill: How women and men react to noisy feedback." Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics, 88: 101592.

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.socec.2020.101592.

Ungated version

Online Appendix

ABSTRACT:

Incentivizing subordinates is a crucial task of anyone in a decision‐making role. However, little is known about the mechanisms behind selection of different types of incentives. Our laboratory experiment characterizes the ways in which male and female decision‐makers assign incentives, and how these choices are perceived by those affected by them. We find that women are significantly less likely to select “competitive” incentives based on comparative performance of workers, particularly in the treatment where their workers can observe their gender. The results are not due to priming but are rather consistent with the explanation that women conform to gender stereotypes in anticipation of subsequent evaluation by workers. Indeed, female decision‐makers are significantly underrated relative to comparable males, even after controlling for incentive choice and an extensive set of individual characteristics. The gender difference in competency ratings can be attributed to male workers rating female decision‐makers disproportionately lower relative to their male counterparts. The gender gap in ratings appears to arise because of gender per se and not due to a differential impact of incentives on decision‐makers' gender.

KEYWORDS: 

Personnel economics; Incentives; Competition; Gender differences; Discrimination,; Economic experiments; Labor markets

CITATION:

Shurchkov, Olga and Alexandra van Geen. 2019. "Why Female Decision‐Makers Shy Away from Promoting Competition." Kyklos, 72 (2): 297-331. Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3366478 or http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/kykl.12202

Data

ABSTRACT:

Despite over 20 years of research and scientific consensus on the topic, climate change continues to be a politically polarizing issue. We conducted a survey experiment to test whether providing the public with information on the exact extent of scientific agreement about the occurrence and causes of climate change affects respondents’ own beliefs and bridges the divide between conservatives and liberals. First, we show that the public significantly underestimated the extent of the scientific consensus. We then find that those given concrete information about scientists’ views were more likely to report believing that climate change was already underway and that it was caused by humans. However, their beliefs about the necessity of making policy decisions and their willingness to donate money to combat climate change were not affected. Information provision affected liberals, moderates, and conservatives similarly, implying that the gap in beliefs between liberals and conservatives is not likely to be bridged by information treatments similar to the one we study. Finally, we conducted a 6-month follow-up with respondents to see if the treatment effect persisted; the results were statistically inconclusive.

CITATION:

Deryugina, Tatyana & Shurchkov, Olga. (2016). The Effect of Information Provision on Public Consensus about Climate Change. PloS one. 11. e0151469. 10.1371/journal.pone.0151469. 

Online Appendix

ABSTRACT:

This paper uses a two-stage variant of a dynamic global game often used to model speculative attacks to study experimentally whether and when the introduction of an announcement by an uninformed outsider facilitates coordination. Consistent with previous findings, when multiplicity is theoretically possible, the announcement serves as a coordination device and significantly affects the probability of a successful speculative attack. On the other hand, importantly, when the model predicts a unique equilibrium in the same environment, I find that the announcement has no effect on behavior. Beliefs about others’ actions appear to play a crucial role in the differential effect of the announcement on attacking behavior under different information conditions.

KEYWORDS: 

Coordination; Dynamic global games; Equilibrium selection; Beliefs

CITATION:

Shurchkov, Olga. 2016. "Public announcements and coordination in dynamic global games: Experimental evidence." Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics, 61: 20-30.

ISSN 2214-8043, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.socec.2016.01.004.

Ungated version

Online Appendix

ABSTRACT:

We design a laboratory experiment to test the extent to which the often-observed “beauty premium” – a positive relationship between attractiveness and wages – is context-specific. Using three realistic worker tasks, we find that the existence of the “beauty premium” indeed depends on the task: while relatively more attractive workers receive higher wage bids in a bargaining task, there is no such premium in either an analytical task or a data entry task. Our analysis shows that the premium in bargaining is driven by statistical discrimination based on biased beliefs about worker performance. We also find that there is substantial learning after worker-specific performance information is revealed, highlighting the importance of accounting for longer-run interactions in studies of discrimination.

KEYWORDS: 

Beauty premium; Discrimination; Economic experiments; Labor markets

CITATION:

Deryugina, Tatyana and Olga Shurchkov. 2015. "Now you see it, now you don’t: The vanishing beauty premium." Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, 116: 331-345.

ISSN 0167-2681, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jebo.2015.05.007.

Ungated version

Online Appendix

ABSTRACT:

Physically attractive individuals achieve greater success in terms of earnings and status than those who are less attractive. However, whether this “beauty premium” arises primarily because of differences in ability or confidence, bias, or sorting remains unknown. We use a rich dataset from a women's college to evaluate each of these three mechanisms at the college level. We find that students judged to be more attractive perform significantly worse on standardized tests but, conditional on test scores, are not evaluated more favorably at the point of admission, suggesting that more attractive people do not possess greater abilities at the beginning of college. Controlling for test scores, more attractive students receive only marginally better grades in some specifications, and the magnitudes of the differences are very small. Finally, there is substantial beauty-based sorting into areas of study and occupations.

KEYWORDS: 

Beauty premium; Education; Discrimination

CITATION:

Deryugina, Tatyana and Olga Shurchkov. 2015. "Does Beauty Matter in Undergraduate Education?" Economic Inquiry, 53 (2): 940-961.

https://doi.org/10.1111/ecin.12152

Ungated version

Sample Instructions and Supplemental Material

ABSTRACT:

Coordination problems are ubiquitous in social and economic life. Political mass demonstrations, the decision whether to join a speculative currency attack, investment in a risky venture, and capital flight from a particular country are all characterized by coordination problems. Furthermore, all these events have a dynamic nature which has been largely omitted from previous experimental studies. Here I use a two-stage variant of a dynamic global game to study experimentally how the arrival of information in a dynamic setting affects the relative aggressiveness of speculators. In the first stage, subjects exhibit excess aggressiveness, which appears to be driven by beliefs about others’ actions rather than an intrinsic taste for attacking. However, following a failed first-stage attack, subjects learn to be less aggressive in the second stage. On the other hand, the arrival of new, more precise information after a failed attack leads to an increase in subjects’ aggressiveness. Beliefs, again, play a crucial role in explaining how the arrival of information affects attacking behavior.

KEYWORDS: 

Coordination; Learning; Dynamics; Global games; Crises; Beliefs; Excess aggressiveness; Experimental economics

CITATION:

Shurchkov, Olga. Coordination and learning in dynamic global games: experimental evidence. Exp Econ 16, 313–334 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10683-012-9339-3

Full Text

ABSTRACT:

When Russia transitioned to a democratic institutional system in 1991, some of its regions remained under control of old Communist Party elites, while some fell into the hands of political newcomers (“new elites”). Using a new panel dataset spanning 71 of the Russian regions over the years 1994–2006, I show that regions with new-elite governors whose rise to power was influenced by Putin ended up with significantly fewer small and medium enterprises (SMEs) than otherwise similar regions governed by old elites. One interpretation of this result is that Putin, in alliance with the oligarchs, sought to extend his power to the distant resource-abundant regions by promoting relatively inexperienced new elites to govern those regions. As the oligarchs of big business were allowed to monopolize the resources of the new-elite regions, entrepreneurial activity remained at depressed levels. The newcomers’ lack of leadership experience may have also contributed to this result.

KEYWORDS: 

Small enterprises; Political development; Economic transition

CITATION:

Shurchkov, Olga. 2012. "New elites and their influence on entrepreneurial activity in Russia." Journal of Comparative Economics, 40 (2): 240-255.

ISSN 0147-5967, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jce.2011.12.003.

Ungated version

Supplementary Material

Pilot study results published as Fondazione Eni Enrico Mattei Working Paper 356 "Gender Differences in Output Quality and Quantity under Competition and Time Constraints: Evidence from a Pilot Study” (Download)

ABSTRACT:

Gender gaps in the workplace are widespread. One explanation for gender inequality stems from the effects of the interaction between competition and two pressure sources, namely, task stereotypes and time constraints. This study uses a laboratory experiment to find that the gender gap in performance under competition and preferences for competition can be partly explained by the differential responses of men and women to the above pressures. In particular, while women underperform the men in a high-pressure math-based tournament, women greatly increase their performance levels and their willingness to compete in a low-pressure verbal environment, such that they actually surpass the men. This effect appears largely due to the fact that extra time in a verbal competition improves the quality of women’s work, reducing their mistake share. On the other hand, men use this extra time to increase only the quantity of work, which results in a greater relative number of mistakes. A labor market study suggests that the nature of the job and the stress level are correlated with the gender gap in the labor market in a manner consistent with the results of my experiment.

KEYWORDS: 

Gender Differences, Stereotypes, Competition, Effects of Time Pressure

CITATION:

Shurchkov, Olga. 2012. “Under Pressure: Gender Differences in Output Quality and Quantity under Competition and Time Constraints,” the Journal of the European Economic Association, 10(5): 1189-1213.

 https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1542-4774.2012.01084.x

ABSTRACT

This evidence review summarizes the current state of knowledge on gender gaps in academia, focusing on the disciplines that are of particular relevance to the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

KEYWORDS

Open access; Publishing; Gender gaps; Academia

CITATION

Farley A and Shurchkov O. Gender disparities in academic research productivity: A review of the evidence and implications for grant making and open access publishing. Gates Open Res 2021, 5:100.

doi: 10.21955/gatesopenres.1116788.1

Ungated version

ABSTRACT:

Despite a policy push toward equality, substantial gender gaps in earnings and vertical gender segregation persist in the labor market. Studies point to gender-specific occupational sorting as one of the primary explanatory factors. But why do men and women sort into different careers? In this chapter, we document the evidence that suggests that gender differences along four behavioral traits may offer a plausible explanation. Specifically, the consensus in the literature is that women, on average, exhibit greater risk aversion, lower levels of competitiveness, and less desire to negotiate as compared to men. Gender differences in social preferences are less robust, but women appear to be more sensitive to social context and framing. Importantly, there is no conclusive evidence on whether these differences are inherent or societal for any of the individual traits, although most studies point to the latter.

KEYWORDS: 

Gender; Experiments; Labor; Risk preferences; Competitiveness; Negotiation; Social preferences

CITATION:

Shurchkov, Olga and Catherine C. Eckel. 2018. “Gender Differences in Behavioral Traits and Labor Market Outcomes,” in the Oxford Handbook on Women and the Economy, eds. Susan L. Averett, Laura M. Argys and Saul D. Hoffman, 481-512.

DOI: 10.1093/oxfordhb/9780190628963.013.14