Essays in Behavioral Economics

Abstract

In this dissertation I study the psychological factors that influence economic decision-making in a variety of contexts including work place behavior, electoral voting decisions, and take-up of mental health treatment. Chapter 1 examines the role that minority status plays in a group work setting. I run an experiment looking at the impact of being a minority on privately held beliefs about ability and public actions in an online group task. I find that overall the minority status of a group member does not impact how they are viewed nor does it impact how they rate their majority group members. However, when considering minority men and women separately I find that minority women view their majority male group members as being more capable and majority women publicly correct their minority male members at higher rates. In Chapter 2, co-authored with Vincent Pons and Clemence Tricaud , we investigate how past candidate rankings shape the behavior of voters and candidates. Using a regression discontinuity design in two-round elections, we show that candidates who place first by only a small margin in the first round are more likely to stay in the race and win than those placed second. Rankings’ effects are largest when candidates have the same political orientation, but remain strong when only two candidates qualify for the second round and coordination is not needed. Chapter 3, co-authored with Matthew Notowidigdo, Gautam Rao, Heather Sarsons, Frank Schilbach and Jeffrey Yang, provides evidence on the implementation of an online mental health intervention. In this study we measure mental health in a sample of low-income adults in Colorado, and conduct a pilot to evaluate the demand for and efficacy of online delivery of mental health care. We find high rates of poor mental health with 45% of our population experiencing at least mild symptoms of anxiety or depression. We also observe low rates of take-up of online psychotherapy and discover incentives for take-up do not increase use of online psychotherapy.