DONDENA Seminar - Vojtech Bartos

jointly with SI LAB

“Youngism: Experimental Evidence”

SPEAKER: Vojtech Bartos (University of Milan)

ABSTRACT:

Preferences over well-being of different generations shape social, political and economic outcomes. We document systematic bias in social preferences against young adults ("youngism"), and show that it is partly due to inaccurate beliefs that young adults face relatively little hardship. In controlled experimental tasks, respondents from Czech and US nationally-representative samples allocate less money to younger adults than to their own or older age groups. This bias is widespread and similar in size to discrimination against immigrants. Further, people underestimate the prevalence of mental health problems among young adults, and provision of accurate information increases prosocial behavior toward this age group. Negative stereotyping of young adults is multidimensional.

BIO:

Vojtech Bartos is a Senior Assistant Professor (RTD-B) at the Department of Economics, Management, and Quantitative Methods (DEMM) University of Milan (La Statale) and a Fellow of the Fondazione Cav. Lav. Carlo Pesenti. Previously, he was an Assistant Professor at the Department of Economics at the Ludwig-Maximilans-Universität in Munich. He got his PhD at CERGE-EI in Prague. His research interests include Behavioral economics, Development economics, Experimental economics, and Applied microeconomics in general. Vojtech focuses on studying various behavioral aspects of individual decision-making in poor and disadvantaged populations, both in developed and in developing countries. His interests range from the effects of poverty and inequality on individual behavior and underlying sources of discrimination, to the role formal institutions play in populations living mainly in informal or transitional arrangements. He has been involved field experiments in Afghanistan, India, Malawi, and Uganda, Internet field experiments in the Czech Republic, Germany, Hong Kong, the Philippines, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and the United States, and a lab experiment in Germany.

Please note that to receive the ZOOM link and follow the seminar online, you must subscribe to our mailing list (dondena.research@unibocconi.it).