PUBLICATIONS:
"Gender and Leadership in Organisations: The Threat of Backlash" - The Economic Journal, May 2024
with Danila Serra (Texas A&M)
Managerial decisions, such as promotions and demotions, please some employees and upset others. We examine whether having to communicate such decisions to employees, and knowing that employees may react badly, have a differential impact on men's and women's self-selection into leadership roles and their performance if they become leaders. In a novel laboratory experiment that simulates corporate decision-making, we find that women are significantly less likely to self-select into a managerial position when employees can send them angry messages. Once in the manager role, there is some evidence of gender differences in decision-making, but no difference in final outcomes, i.e., overall profits. Male and female managers use different language to motivate their employees, yet differences in communication styles emerge only when workers can send angry messages to managers. Finally, low-rank employees send more angry messages to female managers, and are more likely to question their decisions.
WORKING PAPERS AND WORK IN PROGRESS (SELECTED)
JOB MARKET PAPER.
Mentorship programs are pervasive in workplaces and help in harnessing interpersonal networks. Firms experiment with different models of mentorship, change them when they are unsuccessful or abstain from formal programs altogether. The incentives of mentors to give costly advice and matching of mentors and mentees are understudied and could help firms formulate and implement such programs better. In this paper, I employ an incentivized laboratory experiment with a novel game designed to mimic workplace mentorship to isolate key features of mentorship programs. I investigate under what conditions mentors, who have an informational advantage over their mentees, offer costly advice and push mentees to enter a competitive but high paying environment knowing their aversion to it. I examine if information on the ability of mentees and information on common traits in matching between mentor-mentee pairs make mentors more likely to give advice. I also explore if there is gender bias in advice giving and if so, what drives it. My results show mentors are more likely to offer advice when matched with a mentee on a common trait. Evidence emerges of a tendency in mentors to offer advice suitable for themselves instead of tailoring it to the needs of their mentees.
“Children, gender norms and the labor market outcomes of women”
with Omer Ozak (Southern Methodist University)
We explore whether the gender gap in management and leadership positions can be explained by women's fertility and their offsprings' gender composition. In particular, we hypothesize that variation in the gender composition of their offspring may affect women's willingness to perform tasks that are natural in leadership positions, but which do not conform to female gender roles.
“Degrees of Inequality: Why are there fewer women in undergraduate economics?”
with Manini Ojha (O.P Jindal University).
Evidence suggests that women do not major in quantitatively heavy fields to the same degree as their male counterparts. We design a randomized field experiment aimed at increasing the percentage of women majoring in economics. We test the impact of information on women’s decision to major in economics. We investigate what kind of information matters most and whether the mode of conveyance is important.
Watch a short video we produced and directed to attract more women into economics.
Check out the Undergraduate Women in Economics Challenge
POLICY WRITINGS
1. “The U.S. Veteran Labor Force: Employment Status and Opportunities, Niemi Center at SMU and The Military Initiative at the Bush Institute, Texas (2017)
2. “Evaluating the Liquidity Framework of UK’s Retail Banking Space and Quantifying Customer Stickiness”, HSBC Ltd. (2013).
3. “Competition Policy in Public Procurement” published in www.cci.gov.in, Government of India (2011).