Applied Economics Seminar Series. "Understanding Discrimination by Managers"
Published: 15 January 2025
19 February 2025. Dr Christina Brown, University of Chicago
Dr Christina Brown, University of Chicago
"Understanding Discrimination by Managers"
Wednesday, 19 February 2025. 15:00-16:30
Online
Abstract
Pakistan ranks in the lowest decile in female labor force participation, and even in sectors where women are more prevalent, such as teaching, they earn 70 cents for each dollar men earn. In this project, I test the extent to which statistical versus financial discrimination explains these pay gaps. I partner with 250 schools to randomly vary i). how often managers observe a given employee and ii). whether manager evaluations affect employee’s pay or are just used for feedback and see whether this changes how managers evaluate their employees. First, I find that when their are no stakes associated with performance evaluations, there is no gender bias. This is true both using data from actual performance evaluations, controlling for the aspects of performance I observe, and for randomized vignettes varying the gender of the teacher. In contrast, when principals' evaluations determine teachers' end of year raise, we see that female teachers receive significantly lower ratings. However, when principals are randomly assigned to conduct classroom observations of teachers, this lowers their evaluations of male teachers and results in gender parity in evaluation scores even under financial stakes.
Bio
Christina is a development economist studying labor and behavioral economics questions. Her research examines labor and education market imperfections, especially around issues of asymmetric information. She is an Assistant Professor in the Economics department at the University of Chicago. She received a PhD in Economics from UC Berkeley and worked as a consultant for the World Bank and Save the Children. Prior to working as a researcher, she taught high school physics.
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First published: 15 January 2025