Understanding discrimination is key for designing policy interventions that promote equality in society. Economists have studied the topic intensively, typically taxonomizing discrimination as either taste-based or (accurate) statistical discrimination. To reveal the limitations of this taxonomy...

Many occupations and industries are highly segregated with respect to gender. This segregation could be due to perceived job-specific productivity differences between men and women. It could also result from the belief that single-gender teams perform better. We investigate the two explanations...

Firms without paid employees account for up to 80% of all firms, but only a small minority ever hires. This paper investigates the relationship between labour costs and the decision to hire a first employee and become an employer. Leveraging a unique policy in Belgium that permanently reduced...

We conducted a controlled experiment to study how different gender frames used in the instructions affect economic behavior. In our experiment, we systematically varied the framing of the instructions, either using the male, the female, or a gender-inclusive form. Participants played three...

Gender stereotypes pose an important hurdle on the way to gender equality. It is difficult to quantify the problem, though, as stereotypical beliefs are often subconscious or not openly expressed. User-generated content (UGC) opens up novel opportunities to overcome such challenges, as the...