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Gender, race, and entrepreneurship: A randomized field experiment on investors

papers.ssrn.com

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Re: Gender, race, and entrepreneurship: A randomized field experiment on investors

#91

Post by [deleted] »

dash2 wrote: post #57
Udik wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> are there unambiguously African-American names? The part you quoted seems to say exactly that: there are unambiguously African-American names, but they are associated with low-class, low education backgrounds. Which might confuse the statistics as then the choice would not be purely about race but race and socioeconomic status.

That seems an odd take. Should we look for pure discrimination against any group, that isn't related precisely to the associations people make? I mean, it's possible. Faced with two people who (they believe) have identical backgrounds, I may discriminate against the black one purely because I dislike black people. But equally, I may have imperfect knowledge about two people, and knowing that one is black makes me ass…

[deleted]

Re: Gender, race, and entrepreneurship: A randomized field experiment on investors

#92

Post by 68020 »

As a 'white' father of 3 who has been unemployed for the past few years I can tell you that this paper is sole crushing. Its a monument to how backwards common perception is to reality. Its a declaration from academia to never stop finding ways at punishing (me, my wife and 3 daughters) for my sin of being born white/male/pre1990. From what I have seen, people like me are under-represented in most office environments. Next time you are in an office (in NA at least), look around. Who are the black suited MBAs in charge not hiring? Even the abstract of the paper leads me to believe the the universe is a simulation because why else would it want to destroy opportunities for me and my family and simultaneously assuming, and tying to prove in a lab, that I am the modern Satan.

Re: Gender, race, and entrepreneurship: A randomized field experiment on investors

#93

Post by d0mine »

mc32 wrote: post #15
adflux wrote: post #12

As long as there aren't as much women studying all kinds of engineering, you're going to see disparaties in the workforce. Lets stop trying to force equal distribution but rather equal opportunity. Funny thing to see is that as a country becomes MORE developed, women tend to be LESS inclined to attend STEM studies.

This is the main problem. It’s hard. We could fix it if we were despotic and put people into tracks like the USSR who turned out lots of talented women in STEM, but were not and Film, TV and YT, etc highlight the easy life of glamour and fame, etc. So you end up with a million wanna be starlets and fewer women in STEM than statistics would have. Let “Hollywood” glamorize STEM, propagandize it and you’ll get a better…

> if we were despotic and put people into tracks like the USSR who turned out lots of talented women in STEM

It sound like BS. Have you learned it in school?

Re: Gender, race, and entrepreneurship: A randomized field experiment on investors

#94

Post by musingsole »

krona wrote: post #64
musingsole wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Chinese and Indian cultures suppress female H1B applicants in systemic ways that the US can't influence even if it wanted to.

Do you have data on this as it relates specifically to H1B applications?

That's a ludicrous question.

Re: Gender, race, and entrepreneurship: A randomized field experiment on investors

#95

Post by fastball »

throwaway894345 wrote: post #60
judge2020 wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's the problem - their results show a bias against white and/or male entrepreneurs in this study on gender and race, yet don't point this out and suggest that we should look for negative female/asian bias elsewhere. The results speak for themselves but the abstract and mindset is indicative of what they were really looking for in the first place.

> yet don't point this out and suggest that we should look for negative female/asian bias elsewhere I’m confused, the study does suggest we look for anti-female bias elsewhere. Indeed, the authors seem to argue that it must exist elsewhere, and more powerfully so in order to explain the gender gap.

If your ideas are not falsifiable you're a terrible scientist.

If your goal is to "find evidence for X" instead of "find out the truth" (wherever that leads you), you're a terrible scientist.

I think it is pretty clear which is happening in this case, no?

Re: Gender, race, and entrepreneurship: A randomized field experiment on investors

#96

Post by bitdizzy »

Since ssrn is like social science arxiv let's just throw preprints around. This paper examines the submitted one as well as another.

https://arxiv.org/abs/2010.16084

This paper examines discrimination based on startup founders' gender, race, and age by early-stage investors, using two randomized controlled trials with real venture capitalists. The first experiment invites U.S. investors to evaluate multiple randomly generated startup profiles, which they know to be hypothetical, in order to be matched with real, high-quality startups from collaborating incubators. Investors can also donate money to randomly displayed startup teams to show their anonymous support during the COVID-19 pandemic. The second experiment sends hypothetical pitch emails with randomized startups' information to global venture capitalists and compares their email responses by utilizing a new email technology that tracks investors' detailed information acquisition behaviors. I find three main results: (i) Investors are biased towards female, Asian, and older founders in "lower contact interest" situations; while biased against female, Asian, and older founders in "higher contact interest" situations. (ii) These two experiments identify multiple coexisting sources of bias. Specifically, statistical discrimination is an important reason for "anti-minority" investors' contact and investment decisions, which was proved by a newly developed consistent decision-based heterogeneous effect estimator. (iii) There was a temporary, stronger bias against Asian founders during the COVID-19 outbreak, which started to fade in April 2020.

Re: Gender, race, and entrepreneurship: A randomized field experiment on investors

#97

Post by ihsw »

musingsole wrote: post #94
krona wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you have data on this as it relates specifically to H1B applications?

That's a ludicrous question.

Asking for evidence of your hypothesis is ludicrous. Got it.

Re: Gender, race, and entrepreneurship: A randomized field experiment on investors

#98

Post by Swenrekcah »

icare_1er wrote: post #82
Swenrekcah wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I didn’t see any mention of it in the study but I’d hazard a guess that most VCs are heterosexual men and that might be a factor in an initial preference for women’s pitches, other things being equal.

Still, as most men are straight, this confirms that women have an unfair advantage.

Not necessarily, it is not clear that it would be a positive thing for the woman.

Re: Gender, race, and entrepreneurship: A randomized field experiment on investors

#99

Post by throwaway894345 »

inglor_cz wrote: post #89
throwaway894345 wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> We would rightly locate such a study into, say, 1840, but definitely not 2021. You give far too little credit to 1840 and far too much to 2021.

Look up 1854 Broad Street cholera outbreak. That was when the scientific breakthrough regarding bad water took place - and many actually refused to accept the results. Before that, the most "scientific" theory about cholera outbreaks was the miasma theory, but religious and pseudoreligious beliefs about divine punishment or influence of the stars were not fringe yet.

To be clear, my earlier comment was made in jest. I’m familiar with the Broad Street outbreak, but I’m not aware that religious theories were commonplace among scientists of the time. Notably that science wasn’t taken seriously by society more broadly doesn’t mean that the science of the time was “tainted by religion” (I say this as a religious person). Perhaps we’re making different points: mine is that science today is contaminated by a fervor resembling religion (though I don’t want to overstate the problem—overwhelmingly I think the effect is very low for the time being and I suspect it is highest in areas that are most pertinent to the ideology in question, which thankfully tends not yet to be the hard sciences or engineering disciplines lest our bridges fail, buildings collapse, and rockets explode on the launchpad).

Re: Gender, race, and entrepreneurship: A randomized field experiment on investors

#100

Post by koonsolo »

throwaway894345 wrote: post #49
jari_mustonen wrote: post #31

From abstract: ” Female entrepreneurs received 9% more interested replies than males pitching identical projects and Asians received 6% more than Whites. Our results suggest that investors do not discriminate against female or Asian entrepreneurs when evaluating unsolicited pitch emails and that future research on investor biases should focus on networks and in-person interactions.” In other words: The preferred resu…

Your summary is incorrect. They are not taking their results to indicate that their assumption is incorrect, but rather that the anti-female bias must be even stronger elsewhere to overcome the significant pro-female bias at initial stages.

> that the anti-female bias must be even stronger elsewhere

Where does it mention that there is an overall anti-female bias?

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