Good point! We already address this in the Appendix (4.4.1): 1) VA gravestones offer both religious and non-religious symbols (-> no mechanical effect), and more importantly, 2) the effect holds when restricting the sample to non-military graveyards. So we’re less concerned that this drives results.

LinkedOut? A Field Experiment on Discrimination in Job Network Formation* Abstract. We assess the impact of discrimination on Black individuals’ job networks across the United States using a two-stage field experiment with 400+ f

#QJE Feb 2025, #6, “LinkedOut? A Field Experiment on Discrimination in Job Network Formation,” by Evsyukova (@yuliaevsyukova.bsky.social), Rusche (@felixrusche.bsky.social), and Mill (@econmill.bsky.social): doi.org/10.1093/qje/...

If you are interested in hiring a brilliant applied economist, Felix should be at the top of your list. Felix is certainly one of Mannheim's finest, and I strongly recommend taking a close look at his fascinating work!

Thank you Sascha!

Thanks Max!

Thanks Henning!

Thanks Igor=)

As we were unsure whether we will ever solve those issues, we treated the project always as a high-risk, fun side project!

3. The process of having the whole experiment fully automated (as we had 400+ fake profiles which we needed to visit every day) was also quite tricky. LinkedIn actively works to prevent scraping, so setting up a fully automated process took time and finesse.

2. We were uncertain if we could generate good-enough high-quality AI photos that would be indistinguishable from real ones and whether we can successfully create a Black-White-morphing procedure.

1. We did not know whether we can successfully create (hundreds of) fake LinkedIn accounts and whether those will survive long enough to have a second stage (this was likely the biggest challenge and much of our design reflects the fear of being blocked)

Thanks!

There were a bunch of challenges in the project

Very happy to see the paper out in the QJE. It was really a risky project but was totally worth it.

Hey you!

Check out this cool new paper.

"War Causes Religiosity"

The authors scraped web images of hundreds of thousands of gravestones of deceased U.S. Americans.

People who were randomly drafted into war are at least 20% more likely to have religious gravestones

osf.io/preprints/so...

We are thrilled to curate a Special Issue on “Field Experiments to Reduce Inequality” in the European Economic Review!

Guest editors: @lergetporer.bsky.social @michelebelot.bsky.social @henninghermes.com @fpeter.bsky.social & @simonwiederhold.bsky.social  

Details: tinyurl.com/38hzxdte

#EconSky

New working paper on discrimination in job network formation