Gender Differences in Job Search: Evidence from the Lab

Presenter

Basit Zafar

Professor, Department of Economics

University of Michigan

Abstract

Motivated by gender differences in job search behavior of college students, we design a sequential labor search experiment in the laboratory. Consistent with field evidence, we find that females have lower reservations wages and accept jobs earlier. We then explore the role of risk preferences and beliefs about underlying ability/type in these gender differences. Both risk preferences and beliefs can explain nearly half of the gender gap in reservation wages in the baseline setup. Given these patterns, we then conduct three interventions to see how the gender gap evolves: (1) providing noisy feedback on underlying ability; (2) providing guidance on the calculations to help with belief updating; (3) allowing for recall of previous offers. All three interventions change behavior for both genders in a way consistent with theoretical predictions, but are unable to close the gender gap.