Armenak Antinyan

While hiring discrimination against disabled candidates is widely documented, the reasons for such discrimination and the mechanisms designed to reduce it are not well understood. This study aims to tackle these questions through a large-scale correspondence study. Fictitious job applications were sent to about 4,000 job vacancies for accountants and financial accounts assistants in the UK. Consistent with discrimination, we find a 5.6 percentage point (15%) gap in the employer callback rate associated with mobility impairment indicated by the use of a wheelchair, but substantial occupational heterogeneity. Productivity signals designed to reduce statistical discrimination, including the offer of a positive reference from a previous employer and, enhanced education and technical skills, do not reduce, and actually widen, the disability gap in callbacks. Our findings are suggestive of taste-based discrimination being a significant barrier to employment for disabled people that requires policy attention.

We assess the impact of reminder frequency on the probability of paying overdue property taxes in a randomized controlled trial in China. One reminder a week (sent as a text message) considerably increases the probability of tax compliance and results in tangible fiscal gains compared to a one-off reminder. However, increasing the frequency of reminders to two text messages a week diminishes their effectiveness. The takeaway of our study is that frequent reminders are an important trigger for human behavior, nonetheless, beyond a certain frequency the effectiveness of additional reminders seems to decline.

COVID-19 continues to spread across the globe at an exponential speed, infecting millions and overwhelming even the most prepared healthcare systems. Concerns are looming that the healthcare systems in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) are mostly unprepared to combat the virus because of limited resources. The problems in LMICs are exacerbated by the fact that citizens in these countries generally exhibit low trust in the healthcare system because of its low quality, which could trigger a number of uncooperative behaviors. In this paper, we focus on one such behavior and investigate the relationship between trust in the healthcare system and the probability of potential treatment-seeking behavior upon the appearance of the first symptoms of COVID-19. First, we provide motivating evidence from a unique national online survey administered in Armenia–a post-Soviet LMIC country. We then present results from a large-scale survey experiment in Armenia that provides causal evidence supporting the investigated relationship. Our main finding is that a more trustworthy healthcare system enhances the probability of potential treatment-seeking behavior when observing the initial symptoms.

COVID-19 continues to spread across the globe at an exponential speed, infecting millions and overwhelming even the most prepared healthcare systems. Concerns are looming that the healthcare systems in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) are mostly unprepared to combat the virus because of limited resources. The problems in LMICs are exacerbated by the fact that citizens in these countries generally exhibit low trust in the healthcare system, which could trigger a number of uncooperative behaviors. In this paper, we focus on one such behavior and investigate the relationship between trust in the healthcare system and the likelihood of potential treatment-seeking behavior upon the appearance of the first symptoms of COVID-19. First, we provide motivating evidence from a unique national on-line survey administered in Armenia — a post-Soviet LMIC country. We then present results from a large-scale survey experiment in Armenia that provides causal evidence in support of the investigated relationship. Our main finding is that a more trustworthy healthcare system enhances the likelihood of potential treatment-seeking behavior when observing the initial symptoms.