Ashley Litwin

Ashley Litwin, Gender Bias and Differential Belief Updating.

Abstract: I study whether people respond differently to identically informative signals about men and women. To ensure signals convey identical information, I develop a novel experimental design that fully fixes both prior beliefs and signal distributions across gender. In an experiment with 3,204 subjects, individuals respond dramatically to the gender of the signal-sender. Subjects are more likely to violate Bayes’ Rule, failing to update or updating in the wrong direction, after learning a woman succeeded or a man failed. They update more rationally after learning a man succeeded or a woman failed. Additional treatments explore how to mitigate these gendered mistakes.

Ashley Litwin, Judd B. Kessler, Muriel Niederle, Hannu Kivimaki, Please Take A Minute: How Prosocial Choices Change with Deliberation.

Abstract: People often make decisions quickly when presented with a choice. Are their intuitive answers a good approximation of what they would choose if they took more time to decide? We explore how individuals' choices change with deliberation and find that later choices systematically differ from early ones. We focus on prosocial decisions and find that individuals' choices respond more to social efficiency as they deliberate over the course of a minute. Our results call into question the use of revealed preference for welfare when prosocial choices are made quickly and provide guidance to policy makers and charities.

Ashley Litwin and Corinne Low (Forthcoming), Measuring Discrimination with Experiments.

Abstract: Discrimination based on group membership has been documented in numerous settings and on the basis of a diverse set of characteristics. This article reviews the key experimental methods used by economists to measure discrimination, provide insights on its sources, and mitigate its effects. We first summarize common lab experimental methods for detecting discrimination, including economic games and stylized hiring experiments. We then discuss field experimental methods, including audit studies, correspondence studies, and Incentivized Resume Rating (IRR). Throughout, we emphasize the strengths and weaknesses of both lab and field experiments and provide practical guidance for avoiding common design pitfalls. We conclude with suggestions for future research.