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Essays in Development and Behavioral Economics
Essays in Development and Behavioral Economics
Essays in Development and Behavioral Economics

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자료유형  
 학위논문 서양
최종처리일시  
20260202103516
ISBN  
9798288862090
DDC  
150
저자명  
Ho, Yuen.
서명/저자  
Essays in Development and Behavioral Economics
발행사항  
[Sl] : University of California, Berkeley, 2025
발행사항  
Ann Arbor : ProQuest Dissertations & Theses, 2025
형태사항  
231 p
주기사항  
Source: Dissertations Abstracts International, Volume: 87-01, Section: B.
주기사항  
Advisor: Magruder, Jeremy;Kaur, Supreet.
학위논문주기  
Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of California, Berkeley, 2025.
초록/해제  
요약This dissertation includes four essays at the intersection of development and behavioral economics. A unifying theme across these essays is the exploration of how social environments shape economic decision making. A variety of research methods are employed throughout, including implementing field experiments in real-world contexts, leveraging naturally occurring experiments using administrative datasets, and synthesizing interdisciplinary literature across psychology and economics. Of particular interest is how these dynamics affect low-income and marginalized populations, from manufacturing workers in Tanzania, to the psychology of those living in poverty, to marginalized social and political identities.The first chapter, "Selection and Sorting when Supervisors have Discretion," coauthored with Yihong Huang, begins from the observation that firms are social organizations. In particular, the relationships between workers and their supervisors are an important part of how employees experience their day to day jobs. These relationships can enhance firm productivity, such as through improved information and trust. Yet, these relationships can also lead to biases and preferential treatment. In practice, almost all firms rely on supervisors to select and motivate workers. But what are the benefits and costs of doing so?To make progress on these questions, we partner with a large garment manufacturing firm in Tanzania to implement a series of field experiments to examine decision making when supervisors have discretion. In particular, we focus on a challenge common to all large organizations: how to select future leaders. In a first field experiment, supervisors are asked to refer workers for promotion to new managerial positions. During the referral process, we randomize whether supervisors face financial incentives based on the quality of their referrals. In a complementary experiment, workers decide whether to apply for the new managerial openings. During the application process, we randomly vary whether supervisor selection is emphasized on the application forms that workers receive.Our results show that discretion crowds in supervisors' private information about the managerial quality of workers. Supervisors use private information beyond what the firm could infer from existing administrative data, workers' self-assessments, or coworker referrals. However, discretion also generates costs for firms. Supervisor referrals are not perfectly aligned with the firm's objectives, and supervisors show preferences consistent with gender bias and favoritism. Furthermore, discretion is disliked by workers and reduces the likelihood that workers apply for promotion, directly reducing the number of high quality candidates that the firm receives. Despite the costs of discretion, supervisors select workers with significantly higher measured managerial ability relative to more objective selection methods. Taken together, the results suggest that firms face meaningful trade-offs in using subjective methods, which select workers with higher managerial quality, against more objective methods, which are transparent and preferred by workers.The exploration of the social dynamics within firms extends to social interactions more generally, particularly the importance of implicit norms. In the second chapter, "Breaking the Spiral of Silence," also coauthored with Yihong Huang, we explore how social norms and limited attention jointly interact to shape political discourse. We study this in the context of self-censorship on college campuses, where there are both strong social norms governing political expression and where free ideological debate is believed to be critical for learning and innovation.Using a dynamic model and field experiment with UC Berkeley college students, we first establish that social norms shape public discourse on college campuses. Students who hold socially appropriate views are more likely to express their views publicly. In contrast, students who hold socially inappropriate views are more likely to self-censor. This pattern of public expression leads other students to increase their beliefs about the popularity of the socially appropriate views, which further discourages the expression of opposing views, creating a self-fulfilling cycle. Next, we find that inattention to silence is a key mechanism that perpetuates such a spiral and enables misperceptions to persist. When we experimentally increase attention to the number of students who stay silent on a topic, students form more accurate beliefs about the true level of dissent and become more likely to voice dissent to others. With sufficient attention to silence, the spiral of silence is broken and misperceptions are corrected. Extensions using data from real public forums and nationally representative surveys suggest our findings apply not only to college campuses but to political discourse more broadly. Taken together, these results have implications for any decision-making process that either explicitly or implicitly takes public opinion into account. We have been invited to revise and resubmit this chapter for publication at the Journal of Political Economy.Social interactions are governed not only by implicit norms but also by relative comparisons. People inevitably rank themselves against others. When are such comparisons beneficial and when are they harmful? Estimating the effects of relative rank on outcomes poses an empirical challenge because rank is often endogenously determined. In the third chapter "Gender Differences in Competition: The Role of Rank effects" I exploit quasi-exogenous variation in relative rank in a high-stakes, real world setting to study the causal effects of rank on performance. In competitive swimming, swimmers are usually divided into sub-groups, or heats, based on their ex-ante rankings. The difference in entry times between any two swimmers ex-ante is quite small, often tenths of seconds, but swimmers just above the threshold will be placed in a faster heat, as the last ranked swimmer, while swimmers just below the threshold will be placed in a slower heat, as the first ranked swimmer. Exploiting this quasi-exogenous variation in relative rank, I use a regression discontinuity design to estimate the causal effects of rank on performance.Standard economic models would predict no effect of group rank on performance in this setting, as it is rank in the overall competition rather than rank in a specific heat that matters for tournament outcomes. In contrast, the results show there are significant gender differences in response to rank. Women significantly improve their performance when they are ranked first in a slower heat relative to when they are ranked last in a faster heat, whereas there is no comparable effect of rank on performance for men. Taken together, the results suggest there are significant gender differences in response to competition incentives in a real-world, high stakes setting.Across these essays, I seek to understand both how an individual's circumstances shape their psychology and how their psychology in turn shapes their decisions and their circumstances. In the final chapter, "The Psychology of Poverty: Current and Future Directions," coauthored with Ye Rang Park, Kristina Hallez, Supreet Kaur, Mahesh Srinivasan, and Jiaying Zhao, we synthesize evidence across both psychology and economics on the psychological impacts of poverty and their potential role in perpetuating poverty. We do so using an organizing framework comprising four sets of mechanisms: cognitive function, mental health, beliefs, and preferences. We discuss the strength of the evidence supporting both how poverty affects these four mechanisms, and how these four mechanisms in turn affect poverty. From our synthesis, we determine that the existing evidence has clearly established proof of concept that psychological factors exist in the experience of and response to poverty. However, there is still a lack of evidence on whether these effects are meaningful in magnitude and lead to the perpetuation of poverty. From our review, we identify promising future directions for research which could help close these evidence gaps, with important implications for the design of poverty reduction policies.
초록/해제  
요약This chapter was published in Current Directions in Psychological Science in December 2024.Taken together, these essays highlight the myriad ways in which social identities and social contexts shape economic behavior. Better understanding these patterns helps us to form more accurate models of human behavior, with implications for how to effectively design policies ranging from workplace incentives to poverty reduction programs. There is much that we do not understand about the interplay between social psychology and economics, and what a gift it is to seek the answers.
일반주제명  
Behavioral sciences
일반주제명  
Gender studies
키워드  
Behavioral economics
키워드  
Decision making
키워드  
Discretion
키워드  
Gender differences
키워드  
Inattention
키워드  
Poverty
기타저자  
University of California, Berkeley Agricultural & Resource Economics
기본자료저록  
Dissertations Abstracts International. 87-01B.
전자적 위치 및 접속  
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■1001  ▼aHo,  Yuen.
■24510▼aEssays  in  Development  and  Behavioral  Economics
■260    ▼a[Sl]▼bUniversity  of  California,  Berkeley▼c2025
■260  1▼aAnn  Arbor▼bProQuest  Dissertations  &  Theses▼c2025
■300    ▼a231  p
■500    ▼aSource:  Dissertations  Abstracts  International,  Volume:  87-01,  Section:  B.
■500    ▼aAdvisor:  Magruder,  Jeremy;Kaur,  Supreet.
■5021  ▼aThesis  (Ph.D.)--University  of  California,  Berkeley,  2025.
■520    ▼aThis  dissertation  includes  four  essays  at  the  intersection  of  development  and  behavioral  economics.  A  unifying  theme  across  these  essays  is  the  exploration  of  how  social  environments  shape  economic  decision  making.  A  variety  of  research  methods  are  employed  throughout,  including  implementing  field  experiments  in  real-world  contexts,  leveraging  naturally  occurring  experiments  using  administrative  datasets,  and  synthesizing  interdisciplinary  literature  across  psychology  and  economics.  Of  particular  interest  is  how  these  dynamics  affect  low-income  and  marginalized  populations,  from  manufacturing  workers  in  Tanzania,  to  the  psychology  of  those  living  in  poverty,  to  marginalized  social  and  political  identities.The  first  chapter,  "Selection  and  Sorting  when  Supervisors  have  Discretion,"  coauthored  with  Yihong  Huang,  begins  from  the  observation  that  firms  are  social  organizations.  In  particular,  the  relationships  between  workers  and  their  supervisors  are  an  important  part  of  how  employees  experience  their  day  to  day  jobs.  These  relationships  can  enhance  firm  productivity,  such  as  through  improved  information  and  trust.  Yet,  these  relationships  can  also  lead  to  biases  and  preferential  treatment.  In  practice,  almost  all  firms  rely  on  supervisors  to  select  and  motivate  workers.  But  what  are  the  benefits  and  costs  of  doing  so?To  make  progress  on  these  questions,  we  partner  with  a  large  garment  manufacturing  firm  in  Tanzania  to  implement  a  series  of  field  experiments  to  examine  decision  making  when  supervisors  have  discretion.  In  particular,  we  focus  on  a  challenge  common  to  all  large  organizations:  how  to  select  future  leaders.  In  a  first  field  experiment,  supervisors  are  asked  to  refer  workers  for  promotion  to  new  managerial  positions.  During  the  referral  process,  we  randomize  whether  supervisors  face  financial  incentives  based  on  the  quality  of  their  referrals.  In  a  complementary  experiment,  workers  decide  whether  to  apply  for  the  new  managerial  openings.  During  the  application  process,  we  randomly  vary  whether  supervisor  selection  is  emphasized  on  the  application  forms  that  workers  receive.Our  results  show  that  discretion  crowds  in  supervisors'  private  information  about  the  managerial  quality  of  workers.  Supervisors  use  private  information  beyond  what  the  firm  could  infer  from  existing  administrative  data,  workers'  self-assessments,  or  coworker  referrals.  However,  discretion  also  generates  costs  for  firms.  Supervisor  referrals  are  not  perfectly  aligned  with  the  firm's  objectives,  and  supervisors  show  preferences  consistent  with  gender  bias  and  favoritism.  Furthermore,  discretion  is  disliked  by  workers  and  reduces  the  likelihood  that  workers  apply  for  promotion,  directly  reducing  the  number  of  high  quality  candidates  that  the  firm  receives.  Despite  the  costs  of  discretion,  supervisors  select  workers  with  significantly  higher  measured  managerial  ability  relative  to  more  objective  selection  methods.  Taken  together,  the  results  suggest  that  firms  face  meaningful  trade-offs  in  using  subjective  methods,  which  select  workers  with  higher  managerial  quality,  against  more  objective  methods,  which  are  transparent  and  preferred  by  workers.The  exploration  of  the  social  dynamics  within  firms  extends  to  social  interactions  more  generally,  particularly  the  importance  of  implicit  norms.  In  the  second  chapter,  "Breaking  the  Spiral  of  Silence,"  also  coauthored  with  Yihong  Huang,  we  explore  how  social  norms  and  limited  attention  jointly  interact  to  shape  political  discourse.  We  study  this  in  the  context  of  self-censorship  on  college  campuses,  where  there  are  both  strong  social  norms  governing  political  expression  and  where  free  ideological  debate  is  believed  to  be  critical  for  learning  and  innovation.Using  a  dynamic  model  and  field  experiment  with  UC  Berkeley  college  students,  we  first  establish  that  social  norms  shape  public  discourse  on  college  campuses.  Students  who  hold  socially  appropriate  views  are  more  likely  to  express  their  views  publicly.  In  contrast,  students  who  hold  socially  inappropriate  views  are  more  likely  to  self-censor.  This  pattern  of  public  expression  leads  other  students  to  increase  their  beliefs  about  the  popularity  of  the  socially  appropriate  views,  which  further  discourages  the  expression  of  opposing  views,  creating  a  self-fulfilling  cycle.  Next,  we  find  that  inattention  to  silence  is  a  key  mechanism  that  perpetuates  such  a  spiral  and  enables  misperceptions  to  persist.  When  we  experimentally  increase  attention  to  the  number  of  students  who  stay  silent  on  a  topic,  students  form  more  accurate  beliefs  about  the  true  level  of  dissent  and  become  more  likely  to  voice  dissent  to  others.  With  sufficient  attention  to  silence,  the  spiral  of  silence  is  broken  and  misperceptions  are  corrected.  Extensions  using  data  from  real  public  forums  and  nationally  representative  surveys  suggest  our  findings  apply  not  only  to  college  campuses  but  to  political  discourse  more  broadly.  Taken  together,  these  results  have  implications  for  any  decision-making  process  that  either  explicitly  or  implicitly  takes  public  opinion  into  account.  We  have  been  invited  to  revise  and  resubmit  this  chapter  for  publication  at  the  Journal  of  Political  Economy.Social  interactions  are  governed  not  only  by  implicit  norms  but  also  by  relative  comparisons.  People  inevitably  rank  themselves  against  others.  When  are  such  comparisons  beneficial  and  when  are  they  harmful?  Estimating  the  effects  of  relative  rank  on  outcomes  poses  an  empirical  challenge  because  rank  is  often  endogenously  determined.  In  the  third  chapter  "Gender  Differences  in  Competition:  The  Role  of  Rank  effects"  I  exploit  quasi-exogenous  variation  in  relative  rank  in  a  high-stakes,  real  world  setting  to  study  the  causal  effects  of  rank  on  performance.  In  competitive  swimming,  swimmers  are  usually  divided  into  sub-groups,  or  heats,  based  on  their  ex-ante  rankings.  The  difference  in  entry  times  between  any  two  swimmers  ex-ante  is  quite  small,  often  tenths  of  seconds,  but  swimmers  just  above  the  threshold  will  be  placed  in  a  faster  heat,  as  the  last  ranked  swimmer,  while  swimmers  just  below  the  threshold  will  be  placed  in  a  slower  heat,  as  the  first  ranked  swimmer.  Exploiting  this  quasi-exogenous  variation  in  relative  rank,  I  use  a  regression  discontinuity  design  to  estimate  the  causal  effects  of  rank  on  performance.Standard  economic  models  would  predict  no  effect  of  group  rank  on  performance  in  this  setting,  as  it  is  rank  in  the  overall  competition  rather  than  rank  in  a  specific  heat  that  matters  for  tournament  outcomes.  In  contrast,  the  results  show  there  are  significant  gender  differences  in  response  to  rank.  Women  significantly  improve  their  performance  when  they  are  ranked  first  in  a  slower  heat  relative  to  when  they  are  ranked  last  in  a  faster  heat,  whereas  there  is  no  comparable  effect  of  rank  on  performance  for  men.  Taken  together,  the  results  suggest  there  are  significant  gender  differences  in  response  to  competition  incentives  in  a  real-world,  high  stakes  setting.Across  these  essays,  I  seek  to  understand  both  how  an  individual's  circumstances  shape  their  psychology  and  how  their  psychology  in  turn  shapes  their  decisions  and  their  circumstances.  In  the  final  chapter,  "The  Psychology  of  Poverty:  Current  and  Future  Directions,"  coauthored  with  Ye  Rang  Park,  Kristina  Hallez,  Supreet  Kaur,  Mahesh  Srinivasan,  and  Jiaying  Zhao,  we  synthesize  evidence  across  both  psychology  and  economics  on  the  psychological  impacts  of  poverty  and  their  potential  role  in  perpetuating  poverty.  We  do  so  using  an  organizing  framework  comprising  four  sets  of  mechanisms:  cognitive  function,  mental  health,  beliefs,  and  preferences.  We  discuss  the  strength  of  the  evidence  supporting  both  how  poverty  affects  these  four  mechanisms,  and  how  these  four  mechanisms  in  turn  affect  poverty.  From  our  synthesis,  we  determine  that  the  existing  evidence  has  clearly  established  proof  of  concept  that  psychological  factors  exist  in  the  experience  of  and  response  to  poverty.  However,  there  is  still  a  lack  of  evidence  on  whether  these  effects  are  meaningful  in  magnitude  and  lead  to  the  perpetuation  of  poverty.  From  our  review,  we  identify  promising  future  directions  for  research  which  could  help  close  these  evidence  gaps,  with  important  implications  for  the  design  of  poverty  reduction  policies.  
■520    ▼aThis  chapter  was  published  in  Current  Directions  in  Psychological  Science  in  December  2024.Taken  together,  these  essays  highlight  the  myriad  ways  in  which  social  identities  and  social  contexts  shape  economic  behavior.  Better  understanding  these  patterns  helps  us  to  form  more  accurate  models  of  human  behavior,  with  implications  for  how  to  effectively  design  policies  ranging  from  workplace  incentives  to  poverty  reduction  programs.  There  is  much  that  we  do  not  understand  about  the  interplay  between  social  psychology  and  economics,  and  what  a  gift  it  is  to  seek  the  answers.
■590    ▼aSchool  code:  0028.
■650  4▼aBehavioral  sciences
■650  4▼aGender  studies
■653    ▼aBehavioral  economics
■653    ▼aDecision  making
■653    ▼aDiscretion
■653    ▼aGender  differences
■653    ▼aInattention
■653    ▼aPoverty
■690    ▼a0501
■690    ▼a0602
■690    ▼a0511
■690    ▼a0733
■71020▼aUniversity  of  California,  Berkeley▼bAgricultural  &  Resource  Economics.
■7730  ▼tDissertations  Abstracts  International▼g87-01B.
■790    ▼a0028
■791    ▼aPh.D.
■792    ▼a2025
■793    ▼aEnglish
■85640▼uhttp://www.riss.kr/pdu/ddodLink.do?id=T17357466▼nKERIS▼z이  자료의  원문은  한국교육학술정보원에서  제공합니다.

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