The Role of Beliefs in Driving Gender Discrimination
通过实验发现，雇主在男性任务中偏好男性求职者，但歧视并非针对性别，而是源于对群体平均表现的信念，同时存在内群体偏好和形象顾虑的影响。
Although there is ample evidence of discrimination against women in the workplace, it can be difficult to understand what factors contribute to discriminatory behavior. We use an experiment to both document discrimination and unpack its sources. First, we show that, on average, employers prefer to hire male over female workers for male-typed tasks, even when the two workers have identical résumés. Second, and most critically, we use a control condition to identify that this discrimination is not specific to gender. Employers are simply less willing to hire a worker from a group that performs worse on average, even when this group is, instead, defined by a nonstereotypical characteristic. In this way, beliefs about average group differences are the key driver of discrimination against women in our setting. We also document some evidence for in-group preferences that contribute to the gender discrimination observed. Finally, our design allows us to understand and quantify the extent to which image concerns mitigate discriminatory behavior. This paper was accepted by Yan Chen, decision analysis.