Research

This paper explores the role of inconvenience, defined as the added effort or time required to complete a task, in shaping pro-environmental and self-beneficial behavior. Using a laboratory experiment, participants were presented with choices involving tradeoffs between personal and environmental payoffs, with varying levels of required effort. Results reveal that inconvenience disproportionately deters pro-environmental behavior compared to self-beneficial actions. Furthermore, tradeoffs between personal monetary benefits and environmental outcomes amplify the negative impact of effort on pro-environmental decisions. The findings underscore that individuals often use inconvenience as a justification to avoid environmentally friendly actions, with significant implications for promoting sustainable behaviors in real-world contexts. 

This study explores gender discrimination in hiring college students for technical jobs. Building on the simple experimental setup that provides competence information to employers, this study explores the response of employers to agentic qualities (assertiveness, confidence, dominance, self-reliance, and diligence) deemed to be important for successful career. Evaluators respond to competence and agency signals when ranking candidates for a mathematical task. Although women face documented penalties in leadership and hiring decisions, it is unclear whether these biases endure when competence information is ambiguous or when presented agentic qualities also signal competence. To address this gap, we conduct an online experiment in which participants rank candidate profiles—constructed from actual student data—across a 2×2×2 design: competence signal clarity (low vs. high noise), qualities framing (dominance only vs. bundled agency qualities), and role level (entry vs. senior). We examine interactions among candidate gender, noise condition, and trait presentation on ranking outcomes. Results reveal that there is in fact no gender discrimination against women, if anything women discriminate significantly against men. This pattern stands the test of different quality bundles presented as long as the two candidates are similar but breaks when comparing high vs low agentic individuals, signifying the importance of agentic qualities in hiring process. Further analysis is underway. 

please contact authors for more details on the project.

please contact authors for more details on the project.

Income and consumption growth rates vary for different income groups. Data shows that beyond the headline gross domestic product growth rate, there is a significant heterogeneity in growth rates depending onwhich part of the income distribution one is located in. The article highlights the important implications of such differences in growth on economic inequality.

Existing literature has established that female and male legislators can differ in terms of their choices of policies. Also, water pollution policies are found to be ineffective in India. In this paper, I analyze whether having female legislators results in a reduction in levels of water pollution. Utilizing the instrumental variable obtained from close cross-gender elections to overcome potential endogeneity in the election of female candidates and district-specific time trends to control for policy implementation, I find that there is no differential effect of more female legislators in a district on any of the water pollution indicators. Policy design and evaluation for non-local goods such as water pollution need serious attention in terms of method employed.