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1 – 5 of 5Camila Alvarenga and Cicero Braga
In Brazil, over 4.7 million women enrolled in university in the year 2017. However, Brazilian women have been consistently overrepresented in humanities and care majors and…
Abstract
Purpose
In Brazil, over 4.7 million women enrolled in university in the year 2017. However, Brazilian women have been consistently overrepresented in humanities and care majors and underrepresented in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM). Given that observed gender differences in math-intensive fields have lasting effects on gender inequality in the labor market, and that observed gender variations do not necessarily associate with differences in innate ability, in this paper we explore the paths of societal gender bias and gender differences in a Brazilian university.
Design/methodology/approach
We conduct a social experiment at a University in Southeastern Brazil, applying the gender-STEM Implicit Association Test.
Findings
We found that women in STEM are less likely to show gender-STEM implicit stereotypes, compared to women in humanities. The results indicate a negative correlation between implicit gender stereotyping and the choice of math-intensive majors by women.
Originality/value
The stereotype-congruent results are indicative of the gender bias in Brazilian society, and suggest that stereotypes created at early stages in life are directly related to future outcomes that reinforce gender disparities in Brazil, which can be observed in career choices.
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This paper aims at assessing the impact of a number of behavioral interventions on the willingness of informal businesses, in the Egyptian informal sector, to join the formal…
Abstract
Purpose
This paper aims at assessing the impact of a number of behavioral interventions on the willingness of informal businesses, in the Egyptian informal sector, to join the formal sector.
Design/methodology/approach
This paper uses an experimental methodology to examine the impact of behavioral interventions on the formalization of the Egyptian informal sector. Specifically, it conducts a survey experiment on a total of 240 informal businesses, operating in the Egyptian informal sector. The primary data collected from the survey experiment is then analyzed using a binary logistic regression to assess the impact of the behavioral primes on the probability of joining the formal market.
Findings
The empirical findings of the survey experiment indicate that the biggest obstacle facing informal businesses is finding a formal source of finance that could help them in penetrating the market. Providing informal businesses with information on funding opportunities offered by the ministry of micro, small and medium enterprises (MSME) significantly increased the probability of joining the formal sector to benefit from this opportunity.
Originality/value
This paper is the first to apply behavioral primes, in the form of informational cues, to the Egyptian case of informal business owners. Previous research on the use of behavioral nudges and primes has focused mainly on the western economies.
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Farmers often decide simultaneously on crop production or input use without knowing other farmers' decisions. Anticipating the behavior of other farmers can increase financial…
Abstract
Purpose
Farmers often decide simultaneously on crop production or input use without knowing other farmers' decisions. Anticipating the behavior of other farmers can increase financial performance. This paper investigates the role of other famers' behaviors and other contextual factors in farmers' simultaneous production decisions.
Design/methodology/approach
Market entry games are a common method for investigating simultaneous production decisions. However, so far they have been conducted with abstract tasks and by untrained subjects. The authors extend market entry games by using three real contexts: pesticide use, animal welfare and wheat production, in an incentivized framed field experiment with 323 German farmers.
Findings
The authors find that farmers take different decisions under identical incentive structures for the three contexts. While context plays a major role in their decisions, their expectations about the behavior of other farmers have little influence on their decision.
Originality/value
The paper offers new insights into the decision-making behavior of farmers. A better understanding of how farmers anticipate the behavior of other farmers in their production decisions can improve both the performance of individual farms and the allocational efficiency of agricultural and food markets.
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This study aims to investigate the impact of local windfall gains from the Spanish Christmas lottery on household consumption behavior.
Abstract
Purpose
This study aims to investigate the impact of local windfall gains from the Spanish Christmas lottery on household consumption behavior.
Design/methodology/approach
The study applies differences-in-differences to assess permanent income hypothesis (PIH) validity, examining pre- and postlottery consumption effects. Additionally, it also uses an instrumental variable regression, using the lottery shock as an instrument for total expenditures, to estimate the Engel curves.
Findings
The paper finds a PIH violation; households in winning region notably increase consumption on durable and nondurable goods compared to nonwinning ones. Moreover, durable goods consumption is responsive to lottery winnings, while nondurable goods consumption are unit-elastic to expenditure shocks.
Originality/value
To the best of the author’s knowledge, this is the first paper analyzing the effects of winning regions of the Spanish Christmas lottery in all types of consumption goods, testing its consequences in the PIH and estimating its effects in the Engel curves.
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Giovanni Busetta, Maria Gabriella Campolo and Demetrio Panarello
This article deals with the impact of ethnic origin on individual employability, focussing on the first stage of the hiring process. Deeply, the authors’ goal is to fathom whether…
Abstract
Purpose
This article deals with the impact of ethnic origin on individual employability, focussing on the first stage of the hiring process. Deeply, the authors’ goal is to fathom whether there is a preference for native job candidates over immigrants, decomposing the discrimination against minority groups into its statistical and taste-based components by means of a new approach.
Design/methodology/approach
The authors built up a data set by means of an ad hoc field experiment, conducted by sending equivalent fictitious CVs in response to 1000 real online job openings in Italy. The authors developed the discrimination decomposition index using first- and second-generation immigrants.
Findings
The authors’ main result is that both first- and second-generation immigrants are discriminated compared to Italians. In between the two categories, second-generation candidates are discriminated especially if their ethnicities are morphologically different from those of natives (i.e. Chinese and Moroccans). This last finding is a clear symptom of discrimination connected to taste-based reasons. On the other hand, first-generation immigrants of all nationalities but Germans are preferred for hard-work jobs.
Originality/value
The authors develop the discrimination decomposition index to measure the proportion of the two kinds of discrimination (statistical and taste-based) over the total one and apply a probit model to test the statistical significance of the difference in treatment between the three groups of natives, first-generation and second-generation immigrants.
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