Photo Noémi Berlin

NOÉMI BERLIN

CHARGÉ(E) DE RECHERCHES

Research interests

  • arrow_right Economie comportementale
  • arrow_right Economie de la santé
  • arrow_right Microéconomie appliquée

Research group

    Comportements, Droits et Bien-être

HAL open science

Contact

2025-42

The effect of social norms on parents’ beliefs and food choices Evidence from a Lab-in-the-Field Experiment

Noémi Berlin, Tarek Jaber-Lopez, Moustapha Sarr

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Abstract
In a lab-in-the-field experiment, we investigate the influence of social norms on 300 parents’ beliefs regarding the nutritional quality of food items and their subsequent food choices. We use a 3 × 2 between-subject experimental design where we vary two factors: 1-the social norm provided to parents: a descriptive norm (what other parents choose) vs. an injunctive norm (what other parents approve of), and 2-the recipient of the food decisions made by parents: their own child vs. an unknown child. Parents participate in a two-stage process. In the first stage, we elicit their beliefs regarding the nutritional quality of various food items and ask them to make a food basket without specific information. In the second stage, based on their assigned treatment, they receive specific information and repeat the belief elicitation and the food basket selection tasks. We find that only the descriptive norm significantly reduces parents’ overestimation rate of items’ nutritional quality. Injunctive norm significantly improves the nutritional quality of both, the parent’s and child’s baskets. Descriptive norm significantly improves the nutritional quality of child’s baskets only when parents are choosing for unknown child.
Mot(s) clé(s)
social norms, information provision, food choices, food beliefs, parent, child
2024-5

Gender Differences in Early Occupational Choices: Evidence from Medical Specialty Selection

Josep Amer-Mestre, Noémi Berlin, Agnès Charpin, Magali Dumontet

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Abstract
This paper analyses gender differences in occupational choices in a setting in which observed matches are solely determined by supply-side factors: the French centralised medical residency selection mechanism. We show that men and women facing the same occupational choice set make drastically different occupational choices. Medical specialties selected by women pay less, have lower time requirements, and are less competitive. To understand these differences and estimate how much of the gender gap in specialty sorting can be explained by individual preferences for job attributes, we administer a survey to prospective medical residents just before their specialty choice. Using both a hypothetical job choice framework and stated preferences, we show that while “hard” job characteristics (earnings, time requirements) only slightly reduce the gender gap in sorting, “soft” characteristics (daily tasks, contact with patients, willingness to help others) play a larger role in reducing the gap. We also find suggestive evidence of an anticipation effect of fertility on women’s career choices. Our results suggest that individual preferences play a determinant role in explaining gender-based occupational segregation.
Mot(s) clé(s)
Occupational segregation, Gender, Labour market, Job attributes, Willingness to pay
2023-8

Levels of uncertainty and charitable giving

Noémi Berlin, Maria José Montoya Villalobos

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Abstract
This experiment seeks to study the impact of uncertainty and attitudes towards uncertainty on charity donations. We use a modified dictator game, where the donations received by the beneficiaries (environmental NGOs) are exposed to different levels of uncertainty. We study the level of donations and elicit risk aversion, ambiguity aversion, likelihood insensitivity, and pessimism. We aim to test if different levels of uncertainty at the receiver level (risk and ambiguity) impact donations. We do not find any differences between levels of uncertainty compared to no uncertainty. We find that a ``high" level of ambiguity has a significant and negative effect on altruistic behavior compared to a risk or a``low" ambiguity environment. We also find that the effect of pessimism depends on the level of ambiguity. We find no effect of ambiguity aversion, likelihood insensitivity, and pessimism under ``low" ambiguity on altruistic behavior. Meanwhile, under ``high" ambiguity, we find a negative effect of pessimism on charitable giving. These results suggest that there is a threshold for which ambiguity and ambiguity attitudes have a negative impact on donations.
Mot(s) clé(s)
Charitable giving, uncertainty, pro-social behavior, ambiguity attitudes
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