Eye-tracking is emerging as a tool for researchers to better understand cognition and behavior. However, it is possible that experiment participants adjust their behavior when they know their eyes are being tracked. This potential change would be considered a type of Hawthorne effect, in which participants alter their behavior in response to being watched and could potentially compromise the outcomes and conclusions of experimental studies that use eye tracking.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFForenames serve as proxies for gender labels that activate gender stereotypes and gender socialization. Unlike rigid binary gender categories, they differ in the degree to which they are perceived as "masculine" or "feminine." We examined the novel hypothesis that the ability of a forename to signal gender is associated with gender role behavior in women ( = 215) and men ( = 127; = 19.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFMeasuring the total impact of health insurance receipt on household labor supply is important in an era of increased access to publicly provided and subsidized insurance. Although government expansion of health insurance to older workers leads to direct labor supply reductions for recipients, there may be spillover effects on the labor supply of uncovered spouses. While the most basic model predicts a decrease in overall household work hours, financial incentives such as credit constraints, target income levels, and the need for own health insurance suggest that spousal labor supply might increase.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFUsing nineteenth century legal information combined with census information, I examine the effect of state laws that restricted American women's access to abortion on the ratio of children to women. I estimate an increase in the birthrate of 4 % to 12 % when abortion is restricted. In the absence of anti-abortion laws, fertility would have been 5 % to 12 % lower in the early twentieth century.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFJ Policy Anal Manage
December 2011
This paper examines the labor market effects of state health insurance mandates that increase the cost of employing a demographically identifiable group. State mandates requiring that health insurance plans cover infertility treatment raise the relative cost of insuring older women of child-bearing age. Empirically, wages in this group are unaffected, but their total labor input decreases.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFEuropean age discrimination legislation is discussed in the context of the US Age Discrimination in Employment Act (ADEA) and related state laws. US law was originally introduced to protect productive older workers from age stereotypes, but more recently preventing age discrimination has become important as a means of keeping costs down on entitlement programs as the population ages. Changes in enforcement, penalties, exemptions, length of time to file, and burden of proof have changed the effects of the laws over time.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThis paper exploits a major mid-1990s expansion in the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs health care system to provide evidence on the labor market effects of expanding health insurance availability.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThis paper briefly discusses the history, benefits, and shortcomings of traditional audit field experiments to study market discrimination. Specifically it identifies template bias and experimenter bias as major concerns in the traditional audit method, and demonstrates through an empirical example that computerization of a resume or correspondence audit can efficiently increase sample size and greatly mitigate these concerns. Finally, it presents a useful meta-tool that future researchers can use to create their own resume audits.
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