Randall P. Walsh

Games and Discrimination: Lessons From the Weakest Link

Empirically determining whether wage differentials arise because of discrimination is extremely difficult, and distinguishing between different theories of discrimination is harder still. This paper exploits a number of unique features of a high-stakes television game show to determine which contestants discriminate and why. In the show, contestants take turns answering a series of trivia questions, and, at the end of each round of questions, one contestant is voted off by the other players in the round. Our results suggest no evidence of discriminatory voting patterns by males against females or by whites against blacks. However, somewhat surprisingly, we find that in the early rounds of the game women appear to discriminate against men. We test three competing theories for the voting behavior of women: preference-based discrimination, statistical discrimination and strategic discrimination. In doing so, we highlight the types of experimental designs that could be used to distinguish between these theories. Only preference-based discrimination is consistent with the voting patterns.

The Effects of Gender Interactions in the Lab and in the Field

An important issue with conducting economic analysis in the lab is whether the results generalize to real-world environments where the stakes and subject pool are considerably different. We examine data from the game show The Weakest Link to determine whether the gender of ones opponent affects performance. We then attempt to replicate the competitive structure of the game show in the lab with an undergraduate subject pool. The results in the lab only match when we both employ high stakes in the lab ( 50) and limit our analysis to young contestants in the game show (age < 33).

Do People Vote with Their Feet? An Empirical Test of Environmental Gentrification

Tiebout’s (1956) suggestion that people “vote with their feet” to find the community that provides their optimal bundle of taxes and public goods has played a central role in the theory of local public finance over the past 50 years. Given the central importance of Tiebout’s insights, there have been surprisingly few direct tests of his premise. In this paper, we use a Tiebout equilibrium model to derive testable hypotheses about changes in local community demographics. The model clearly predicts increased population density in neighborhoods that experience an exogenous increase in public goods but yields only tentative predictions about the effect on neighborhood composition. To test these hypotheses, we use a difference-in-difference model to identify the effect of initial pollution levels and changes in local pollution on population and demographic composition. Our results provide strong empirical support for the notion that households “vote with their feet” in response to changes in environmental quality. This result has two implications. First, and most broadly, it provides direct empirical support for the assumptions underlying the Tiebout model. Second, in our particular application, the potential for what we call “environmental gentrification” has important implications both for the analysis of environmental equity and for the design of environmental policies aimed at benefiting the less-advantaged elements of society.

Mandate and Paternalism: A Theory of Large Elections

We propose a game theoretic costly voting model of large elections that incorporates the assumption that mandate matters. This innovation is motivated by empirical evidence that US Representatives with larger victory margins on average vote in a more partisan manner. If voters are paternalistic, this new model predicts strictly positive limiting turnout rates as the population grows arbitrarily large. The model also preserves stylized comparative statics results of costly voting models, including the underdog effect and the competition effect. Finally, we develop an innovative computational strategy to solve the model for large, finite, electorates and show that our results are not only qualitatively, but also quantitatively relevant.

Building the Family Nest: A Collective Household Model with Competing Pre-Marital Investments and Spousal Matching

We develop a model of the household in which spousal incomes are determined by pre-marital investments, the marriage market is charaterized by assortative matching, and endogenously-determined sharing rules form the basis of intra-household allocations. By incorporating pre-marital investments and spousal matching into the collective household model, we are able to (a) establish the welfare implications of the collective model for pre-marital choices and spousal matching and (b) identify the fundamental determinants of endogenously-determined and maritally sustainable intra-marital sharing rules. In particular, we find that all sharing rules along the assortative order support unconditionally efficient outcomes where both pre-marital investments and intra-household allocations are efficient. We also show that, for each couple, the marriage market generates a unique and maritally sustainable sharing rule that is a function of the distribution of pre-marital endowments and the sex ratios in the market.

Competing Against the Opposite Sex

Given the tournament-style structure of many aspects of the labor market, one potentially powerful explanation for gender differences in pay and promotion is that men and women respond differently to competitive environments. We examine data from the high-stakes television game show The Weakest Link in order to determine whether men outperform women in competitive settings and whether the performance of men and women is affected by the gender of their opponents. The data show that in head-to-head competition men beat their female opponents over 72% of the time. Controlling for ability using past performance explains at most 27% of this differential. Our results also suggest that mens relative success arises because men perform better when they compete against women than against men, and that the higher the proportion of women among their competitors the better men perform. In contrast, we do not find strong evidence that the performance of women is affected by the gender of their opponents.

Communities, Competition, Spillovers, and Open Space

We explore the impact of the spatial distribution of developers on the private provision of open space. Our analysis yields three main findings. First, we demonstrate that the mixed public good nature of open space (relative to private lot consumption) can lead a single land rent-maximizing developer to over-supply open space relative to the utility-maximizing level. Second, by explicitly incorporating the spatial distribution of open-space spillovers, we show how competition can lead not only to inefficient levels of open space, but also to inefficiencies in its spatial distribution. Finally, we evaluate the impact of market-based open-space instruments. (JEL H41, R14)

Segregation and neighborhood change in northern cities: New historical GIS data from 1900–1930

ABSTRACT Most quantitative research on segregation and neighborhood change in American cities prior to 1940 has utilized data published by the Census Bureau at the ward level. The transcription of census manuscripts has made it possible to aggregate individual records to a finer level, the enumeration district (ED). Advances in geographic information systems (GIS) have facilitated mapping these data, opening new possibilities for historical GIS research. This article reports the creation of a mapped public use dataset for EDs in ten northern cities for each decade from 1900 to 1930. The authors illustrate a range of research topics that can now be pursued: recruitment into ethnic neighborhoods, the effects of comprehensive zoning on neighborhood change, and white flight from black neighbors.