Committee Deliberation and Gender Differences in Influence

Committee Deliberation and Gender Differences in Influence

Amelie Schiprowski (University of Bonn)

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ABSTRACT:

This paper provides empirical evidence on the aggregation of information in hiring committees. We use data on the hiring process of a large company, where committee members first conduct independent one-to-one interviews and then deliberate on a collective hiring decision. We find that the mapping of committee members' initial assessments to final decisions is not deterministic, leaving room for deliberation and individual influence to shape decision outcomes. Decisions are systematically less aligned with the initial recommendations of women than with those of men, despite equal levels of qualification and experience. This gender difference in influence is strongest when disagreement is large and when women are in the minority. Estimating the distribution of influence, we find that most men are more influential than the median woman on the committee. We document implications for the gender composition of new hires.

BIO:

Amelie Schiprowski is an Assistant Professor of Economics at the University of Bonn. She studied economics at Sciences Po Paris and École Polytechnique and received her PhD from the University of Potsdam in 2018. Her research focuses on empirical labor economics, with a focus on understanding firms’ and workers’ behavior in the process of labor market matching.