English
Valencià
Seminario Theory-Experimental
University of Cambridge
16-Oct-2023
seminar – 14:30
Recent literature shows equally performing individuals belonging to different social groups can have different beliefs about their abilities, and, consequently, make different educational and occupational choices. This paper contributes to understanding this phenomenon. I show agents can use statistics about the prevalence of their social group among the successful individuals in a task to limit the adverse effects of momentary noise in their perception of their chances of success. This enables them to improve decision making on average, even when these statistics are irrelevant in a Bayesian sense. This individually optimal behavior can nevertheless induce persistent asymmetries in both belief formation and choice behavior across otherwise identical social groups that are not driven by ability differences.