Doctoral Dissertation Research in Economics: Do Identity Concerns Affect Labor Supply?

认同感可以对包括工作在内的行为产生强大的影响。认为自己属于一个群体的工人可能会认为与另一个群体相关的工作是对他们身份的侵犯，特别是如果该工作与被认为社会地位较低的群体相关。这种身份认同渠道可能在一定程度上解释了为什么一些群体在某些职业中的代表性过高或过低。与身份相关的群体在职业中的代表不当导致了人才的错配，并导致了经济效率低下。然而，由于各种原因，研究人员很难确定身份对劳动力供应的影响。本研究将使用实验方法来研究身份担忧如何影响劳动力供给。这项研究首次对身份对劳动力供给的影响进行了实验检验，并区分了内在动机(如自我形象)和外在动机(如对社会制裁的恐惧)的影响。了解这些身份效应将有助于讨论为什么职业选择不能均匀地分布在具有潜在重要政策意义的人群中。这项研究的结果将为提高劳动力市场效率、改善就业匹配和促进经济增长的政策提供重要投入。这个项目通过实地实验考察身份认同问题如何影响特定职业的劳动力供应。对一天工作机会感兴趣的临时工被提供了一大套潜在的工作机会，并被要求选择是否接受或拒绝每个机会，其中一个是随机实施的。虽然所有的工作机会都涉及一项默认的制造任务，但求职者还需要私下花一些时间做一项额外的任务，这项工作会随着工作机会的不同而有所不同。使用单独收集的关于任务的社会关联和当地社会群体的感知等级的调查信息，预测哪些工人-提供组合将涉及身份问题。这一设计使研究人员能够量化由于身份问题的预测存在而导致的工作接受率的下降。此外，通过随机改变员工是否期望他们的工作决定被公布给他们的邻居，人们可以区分内在动机和外在动机的影响。这项研究的结果将改善劳动力市场的功能，从而促进经济增长。这一奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力优势和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

A sense of identity can be a powerful influence over behavior, including work. Workers who identify themselves as belonging to one group may regard a job associated with a different group as a violation of their identity, especially if the job is associated with a group perceived to have lower social status. This identity channel may partly explain why some groups are over- or under-represented in some occupations. The identity-related mis-representation of groups in occupations leads to a misallocation of talent and cause economic inefficiency. The effect of identity on labor supply, however, has been difficult to establish by researchers for a variety of reasons. This study will use experimental methods to study how identity concerns affect labor supply. The study provides the first experimental test of identity effect on labor supply and distinguishes the effect of intrinsic motivations (e.g. self-image) from extrinsic motivations (e.g. fear of social sanctions). Understanding these identity effects would inform discussions on why occupational choice is not evenly distributed across groups of people with potentially important policy implications. The results of this study will provide major inputs into policies to increase the efficiency of labor markets, improve job matches and increase economic growth. This project examines how identity concerns affect job-specific labor supply using a field experiment. Casual laborers interested in a one-day job opportunity are presented with a large set of potential job offers and asked to choose whether to accept or decline each offer, one of which is randomly implemented. While all offers involve a default manufacturing task, job seekers are also required to spend some time privately on an additional task, which changes across offers. Using separately-collected survey information on the social associations of the tasks and the perceived hierarchy of local social groups, predictions are made of which worker-offer combinations would involve identity concerns. This design allows researchers to quantify the reduction in the job take-up rate that is attributable to the predicted presence of identity concerns. In addition, by randomly varying whether workers expect their job take-up decisions to be publicized to their neighbors or not, one can distinguish the effects of intrinsic and extrinsic motivations. The results of this research will improve the functioning of labor markets, hence economic growth.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.