https://hdl.handle.net/20.500.11811/726 2026-04-14T16:05:51Z 2026-04-14T16:05:51Z Heidhues, Paul Kőszegi, Botond Strack, Philipp https://hdl.handle.net/20.500.11811/13780 2025-12-29T11:17:57Z 2025-06-18T00:00:00Z

Overconfidence and Prejudice Heidhues, Paul; Kőszegi, Botond; Strack, Philipp We develop a model of multi-dimensional misspecified learning in which an overconfident agent learns about groups in society from observations of his and others' successes. We show that the average person sees his group relative to other groups too positively, and this in-group bias exhibits systematic comparative-statics patterns. First, a person is most likely to have negative opinions about other groups he competes with. Second, while information about another group's achievements does not lower a person’s prejudice, information about economic or social forces affecting the group can, and personal contact with group members has a beneficial effect that is larger than in classical settings. Third, the agent's beliefs are subject to "bias substitution", whereby forces that decrease his bias regarding one group tend to increase his biases regarding unrelated other groups.

2025-06-18T00:00:00Z Illing, Hannah Schmieder, Johannes Trenkle, Simon https://hdl.handle.net/20.500.11811/13252 2025-07-22T11:17:33Z 2024-03-13T00:00:00Z

The Gender Gap in Earnings Losses After Job Displacement Illing, Hannah; Schmieder, Johannes; Trenkle, Simon We compare men and women who are displaced from similar jobs by applying an event study design combined with propensity score matching and reweighting to administrative data from Germany. After a mass layoff, women's earnings losses are about 35% higher than men's, with the gap persisting 5 years after displacement. This is partly explained by women taking up more part-time employment, but even women's full-time wage losses are almost 50% higher than men's. Parenthood magnifies the gender gap sharply. Finally, displaced women spend less time on job search and apply for lower-paid jobs, highlighting the importance of labor supply decisions.

2024-03-13T00:00:00Z Radbruch, Jonas Schiprowski, Amelie https://hdl.handle.net/20.500.11811/13106 2025-05-30T15:02:32Z 2024-04-10T00:00:00Z

Interview Sequences and the Formation of Subjective Assessments Radbruch, Jonas; Schiprowski, Amelie Interviewing is a decisive stage of most processes that match candidates to firms and organizations. This article studies how and why a candidate’s interview outcome depends on the other candidates interviewed by the same evaluator. We use large-scale data from high-stakes admission and hiring processes, where candidates are quasi-randomly assigned to evaluators and time slots. We find that the individual assessment decreases as the quality of other candidates assigned to the same evaluator increases. The influence of the previous candidate stands out, leading to a negative autocorrelation in evaluators’ votes of up to 40% and distorting final admission and hiring decisions. Our findings are in line with a contrast effect model where evaluators form a benchmark through associative recall. We assess potential changes in the design of interview processes to mitigate contrasting against the previous candidate.

2024-04-10T00:00:00Z Kaufmann, Marc Andre, Peter Kőszegi, Botond https://hdl.handle.net/20.500.11811/13068 2025-05-09T14:17:52Z 2024-03-18T00:00:00Z

Understanding Markets with Socially Responsible Consumers Kaufmann, Marc; Andre, Peter; Kőszegi, Botond Many consumers care about climate change and other externalities associated with their purchases. We analyze the behavior and market effects of such “socially responsible consumers” in three parts. First, we develop a flexible theoretical framework to study competitive equilibria with rational consequentialist consumers. In violation of price taking, equilibrium feedback nontrivially dampens the impact of a person’s consumption on aggregate consumption, undermining the motive to mitigate. This leads to a new type of market failure, where even consumers who fully “internalize the externality” overconsume externality-generating goods. At the same time, socially responsible consumers change the relative effectiveness of taxes, caps, and other policies in lowering the externality. Second, since consumer beliefs about and preferences over their market impacts play a crucial role in our framework, we investigate them empirically via a tailored survey. Consistent with our model, consumers are often consequentialist, and many believe that they have a dampened impact on aggregate consumption. Inconsistent with our model, however, we also find many respondents who expect to have a one-to-one impact on aggregate consumption. Third, therefore, we analyze how such “naive” consumers modify our theoretical conclusions. They consume less than rational consumers in a single-good economy, but may consume more in a multigood economy with cross-market spillovers. A mix of naive and rational consumers may yield the worst outcomes.

2024-03-18T00:00:00Z