25.06.2020Does persistence pay off? Accessing social activities with a foreign-sounding name

We are happy to announce that Helmut Dietl, together with his co-authors Carlos Gomez-Gonzalez, Paolo Moretti, and Cornel Nesseler, publish their paper on "Does persistence pay off? Accessing social activities with a foreign-sounding name" in Applied Economics Letters.

Does persistence pay off? Accessing social activities with a foreign-sounding name

Abstract

In this paper, we examine if a slight behavioural modification has an influence on discrimination. Specifically, we use a field experiment based on emails to observe if persistence increases the chances of joining a social group. We find that native- or foreign-sounding names are equally successful when being persistent. However, non-persistent individuals with foreign-sounding names suffer from discrimination. The results show that persistent individuals can be especially interesting in the context of field experiments.