@article{Behavioral:5718,
      recid = {5718},
      author = {Ditta, Anthony},
      title = {Essays in Behavioral and Labor Economics},
      publisher = {The University of Chicago},
      school = {Ph.D.},
      address = {2023-03},
      pages = {80},
      abstract = {The three chapters of this dissertation are independent of  one another. 

Gender, Risk, and Signaling: Preferences and  Beliefs

In many signaling environments, female senders  take fewer risks than male senders. To what extent are  these different behaviors a result of different preferences  versus different beliefs? In this chapter I present an  experiment which parses out the effect of preferences and  beliefs on risk taking by male and female senders in a  signaling environment. In particular, I compare risk  preferences to three beliefs: confidence in one's own  abilities, general beliefs about risk, and anticipation of  discrimination. Consistent with previous findings, I find  that women take fewer risks than men in this signaling  environment. However, there is no evidence for differences  in risk preferences between men and women. Instead, there  is strong evidence for differences in beliefs. In  particular, women are less confident in their own abilities  than men. There is some evidence for more pessimistic  beliefs about risk among women than men and no evidence of  anticipated discrimination. 

Sense of Control and  Willingness to Pay For Non-Instrumental Control

Control  can be desirable for two reasons: its instrumental value  and its intrinsic value. Separating the instrumental value  of control from its intrinsic value can be difficult since  most control comes with both. But, it is important to  distinguish between them since they play very different  roles in economic decision-making. To manage this problem,  I focus on control with no instrumental value, which I call  non-instrumental control. In particular, in this chapter I  present an experiment in which I measure the effect of  changes in participant's sense of control on their  willingness to pay for non-instrumental control. The  results are inconclusive. The sense of control manipulation  did not significantly affect participants' sense of control  or their willingness to pay for non-instrumental control.  However, participants' willingness to pay was significantly  positive with notable and predictable heterogeneity. 

The  ``Blue Wall of Silence'' and Police Careers

Many police  departments in the United States have an unwritten code  ``which prohibits disclosing perjury or other misconduct by  fellow officers, or even testifying truthfully if the facts  would implicate the conduct of a fellow officer'' (Chin and  Wells 1997). In this chapter, I use administrative data on  Chicago police officers and the investigation of complaints  against them to create a proxy for instances of officers  testifying for or against other officers. I validate the  proxy using a subset of data for which validation is  possible, and test for correlations between the proxy and  important career outcomes: leaving the police force, being  promoted to higher pay grades, being accused in future  complaints, and having those complaints sustained in  investigations. I find that officers who do not testify  against other officers are less likely to leave the force  and more likely to be accused in future complaints, and  officers who do testify against other officers are more  likely to have complaints sustained against them.},
      url = {http://knowledge.uchicago.edu/record/5718},
      doi = {https://doi.org/10.6082/uchicago.5718},
}