Yuki Takahashi
Working papers
Collaboration is an integral component of workplace environments, and part of collaboration also involves correcting one's colleagues. Using a quasi-laboratory experiment, I study whether people dislike collaborating with someone who corrects them and whether men dislike women's correction more. I find that people, including those with high ability, are less willing to collaborate with someone who has corrected them, even if the correction improves group performance. In addition, I find suggestive evidence that men respond more negatively to women's efficiency-improving corrections but not to women's efficiency-deteriorating corrections. In contrast, women respond roughly equally negatively to any corrections by any gender. Women's or men's beliefs about gender differences in abilities cannot explain these differential responses. These findings suggest that a behavioral bias distorts the optimal selection of talent and penalizes those who correct others' mistakes, and the distortion may be stronger when women correct men.
This paper studies how increased legal tolerance toward domestic violence affects married women's welfare using the domestic violence decriminalization bill introduced to the Russian national congress in 2016. Using difference-in-differences and flexibly controlling for macroeconomic shocks, I find that the bill decreased married women's life satisfaction and increased depression. In addition, I find suggestive evidence that while unmarried women began to express less tolerance toward domestic violence, married women did not, possibly due to the suppressive atmosphere the law brought to the role of married women. These findings suggest that the bill reduced married women's welfare partly through a psychological channel and highlights the importance of the legal institution in harnessing domestic violence even in a country where women's labor force participation rate is very high.
Cognitive skills are an important personal attribute that affects career success. However, colleagues' support is also
vital as most works are done in groups, and the degree of their support is influenced by their generosity. Social norms
enter in groups, and gender may interact with cognitive skills through gender norms in society. Because these gender norms
penalize women with high potential, they can reduce colleagues' generosity towards these women. Using a novel experimental
design where I exogenously vary gender and cognitive skills and sufficiently powered analysis, I find neither the two
attributes nor their interactions affect other people's generosity; if anything, people are more generous to women with
high potential. I argue that my findings have implications for the role of gender norms in labor markets.
Work in progress
Attention and Memory Discrimination in Teamwork (with Boris van Leeuwen)
STEM Gender Gap: An Experiment (with Asumi Saito)
Teaching
