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

认同感可以对行为产生强大的影响，包括工作。认为自己属于一个群体的工人可能会认为与另一个群体有关的工作是对他们身份的侵犯，特别是如果这份工作与一个被认为社会地位较低的群体有关。这种身份认同渠道可以部分解释为什么某些群体在某些职业中代表性过高或不足。与身份相关的职业群体误读导致人才配置不当，导致经济效率低下。然而，由于种种原因，研究人员很难确定身份对劳动力供给的影响。本研究将采用实验方法研究身份关注对劳动力供给的影响。本研究首次对认同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（如害怕社会制裁）的影响。理解这些身份效应将有助于讨论为什么职业选择不是均匀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。本项目通过实地实验考察身份问题如何影响特定工作的劳动力供应。对一天的工作机会感兴趣的临时工被展示给大量潜在的工作机会，并被要求选择接受或拒绝每一个工作机会，其中一个是随机执行的。虽然所有的工作邀约都包含一项默认的制造任务，但求职者也需要花一些时间私下完成一项额外的任务，这在不同的工作邀约中是不同的。利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，预测了哪些工人-提供组合将涉及身份问题。这种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降低。此外，通过随机改变员工是否希望他们的工作决定被告知他们的邻居，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运作，从而促进经济增长。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值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.