Klarita Gërxhani
Biographic Data
| ID | 111546 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Klarita Gërxhani |
| GIVEN NAMES | Klarita |
| FAMILY NAME | Gërxhani |
| SIGNATURE | GËRXHANI K |
| AFFILIATIONS | European University Institute |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-9056-4920 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 26 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 290 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 25 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 1 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2004 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 8 |
Choice homophily on social origin and race: Experimental evidence from a US university
Gender bias in evaluating assistant professorship applicants? Evidence from harmonized survey experiments in Germany and Italy
This study investigates gender biases in the evaluation of applicants for assistant professorships in Germany and Italy. Drawing on the justification-suppression model of prejudice expression, we explore whether biases against women are expressed, suppressed, or even reversed in the appointment process, considering the different normative gender climates and gender equality strategies in the two countries. Using harmonized factorial survey experi…
Experimental Sociology: Outline of a Scientific Field
Experiments have gained prominence in sociology in recent years. Increased interest in testing causal theories through experimental designs has ignited a debate about which experimental designs can facilitate scientific progress in sociology. This book discusses the implications of research interests for the design of experiments, identifies points of commonality and disagreement among the different perspectives within sociology, and elaborates o…
Double standards? Co-authorship and gender bias in early-stage academic evaluations
This article studies gender bias in early-stage academic evaluations in Italy and investigates whether this bias depends on various types of authorship in collaborative work across three academic fields: humanities, economics, and social sciences. We test our hypotheses via a factorial survey (vignette) experiment on a sample from the entire population of associate and full professors employed at Italian public universities in 2019. This is one o…
Competition and Gender Inequality: A Comprehensive Analysis of Effects and Mechanisms
This study uses data from a series of laboratory experiments to provide a comprehensive analysis of gender differences in performance caused by two different dimensions of competition—rivalry for resources and status ranking. It also examines two mechanisms behind such differences. The results indicate that in the absence of any competitive dimension the performance difference between men and women is not statistically significant at the usual le…
Handbook of Sociological Science: Contributions to Rigorous Sociology
The Handbook of Sociological Science offers a refreshing, integrated perspective on research programs and ongoing developments in sociological science. It highlights key shared theoretical and methodological features, thereby contributing to progress and cumulative growth of sociological knowledge.
The effect of co-ethnic social capital on immigrants' labor market integration: A natural experiment
Empirically identifying the causal effect of social capital on immigrants’ economic prospects is a challenging task due to the non-random residential sorting of immigrants into locations with greater opportunities for prior or co-ethnic connections. Our study addresses this selection-bias issue by using a natural-experimental dataset of refugees and other immigrants who were exogenously allocated to their first place of residence by German author…
Hands-off? Laissez-faire policies on Covid-19 may exacerbate health inequalities
Purpose This paper establishes an association between income and the likelihood of seeking medical treatment for Covid-19 symptoms in some countries. We provide an explanation for this income effect based on the stringency of government response to the pandemic and the unequal distribution of agency among social classes. Design/methodology/approach The paper makes use of data from the Six-Country Survey on Covid-19 to establish the existence of a…
Anticipating Peer Ranking Causes Hormonal Adaptations That Benefit Cognitive Performance
Performance ranking is common across a range of professional and recreational domains. Even when it has no economic consequences but does order people in terms of their social standing, anticipating such performance ranking may affect how people feel and perform. We examined this possibility by asking human subjects to execute a simple cognitive task while anticipating their performance being ranked by an outside evaluator. We measured baseline a…
Who Will Do It? Volunteering to Change Cooperation Rules in a Heterogeneous Population
We study whether and when a second-order collective action problem, like the change of existing formal rules governing cooperation, can be resolved to ultimately solve first-order collective good dilemmas. We do so by examining the conditions under which individuals change cooperation rules when both their material incentives to cooperate and their social preferences for outcome distributions differ. Our experimental findings show that proselfs w…
Enforcing Your Own Human Rights? The Role of Social Norms in Compliance with Human Rights Treaties
Although scholars are increasingly able to explain why states (do not) comply with human rights treaties, the role of social norms in compliance has been neglected. This is remarkable because human rights often directly address social norms. Our study aims to contribute to the existing literature by providing quantitative and qualitative evidence on the relationship between citizens’ social norms and compliance with human rights treaties. The qua…
Status ranking and gender inequality: A cross-country experimental comparison
Gender Differences in Recognition for Group Work
We study whether gender influences credit attribution for group work using observational data and two experiments. We use data from academic economists to test whether coauthorship matters differently for tenure for men and women. We find that, conditional on quality and other observables, men are tenured similarly regardless of whether they coauthor or solo author. Women, however, are less likely to receive tenure the more they coauthor. We then…
The Experimental Approach to Studying Employers' Hiring Behavior
This essay advocates the use of experimental methods to study labor demand. Experimentation contributes to a better understanding of employers' hiring behavior by establishing what is cause and what is effect in observed behavior and allows for a better grip on the mechanisms underlying the hiring process. Given the difficulties in obtaining information from employers, experiments offer a fruitful alternative route to collecting information about…
The Demand Side of Hiring: Employers in the Labor Market
Sociological research on labor markets has focused most of its attention on the supply side of the labor market, that is, the characteristics of job seekers and job incumbents. Despite its pivotal and we believe primary role in labor market processes, the demand side, in particular the hiring decisions made by employers, has received less attention. The employment relationship, however, comprises both the demand and supply sides, as well as the m…
Giving Up on the Joneses? The Relationship between Income Inequality and Status-seeking
The objective of this article is to study status-seeking, defined as pursuit for elevated social status, and how it relates to income inequality. Building on sociological, psychological, and economic literature, we formulate two opposing hypotheses suggesting a positive and a negative relationship between income inequality and status-seeking. To test these hypotheses, we use repeated cross-sectional micro-data from the European Social Survey, whi…
Employers' social contacts and their hiring behavior in a factorial survey
The emergence of employer information networks in an experimental labor market
The Effect of Education on Informal Sector Participation in a Post-Communist Country
This article examines participation in the informal economy in Albania, a post-communist country in transition. In particular, it focuses on the effect of education while considering other individual, social, and institutional factors. Two factors that can be central in the educational effect on informal sector participation are considered. The human capital factor, referring to the income-related returns of education, may lead to less participat…
I am not alone: Understanding public support for the welfare state
This article explores to what extent and how individuals' welfare state attitudes relate to their subjective assessment of the available social support. Using various sociological and sociopsychological theories the authors first provide a theoretical analysis of the micro-macro links between perceived social support (micro), social trust in support availability (macro) and public attitudes towards welfare states (micro). An empirical test based …
Financial Satisfaction and (in)formal Sector in a Transition Country
Clientelism and polarized voting: Empirical evidence
One must take country-specific institutional features into account when analyzing former communist countries’ transformation process to new political institutions. We do so for post-communist Albania, where the regional and cultural polarization that has existed for centuries has evolved to clientelism in the new democracy. We show how clientelistic parties give rise to very particular voting patterns. These reveal major differences across region…
Explaining gender differences in tax evasion: The case of Tirana, Albania
Recently, a considerable amount of research has focused on the evidence of gender differences in corruption. Research conducted on another predatory activity, tax evasion, similarly shows strong differences between women's and men's behaviors. This paper tests this finding in a transition country using a unique data set collected from a field survey of households in Tirana, Albania in 2000. Acknowledging that scholars generally explain gender dif…
Did You Pay Your Taxes?' How (Not) to Conduct Tax Evasion Surveys in Transition Countries
Tax evasion and income source: A comparative experimental study
The Informal Sector in Developed and Less Developed Countries: A Literature Survey
The Demand Side of Hiring: Employers in the Labor Market
Sociological research on labor markets has focused most of its attention on the supply side of the labor market, that is, the characteristics of job seekers and job incumbents. Despite its pivotal and we believe primary role in labor market processes, the demand side, in particular the hiring decisions made by employers, has received less attention. The employment relationship, however, comprises both the demand and supply sides, as well as the m…
Gender Differences in Recognition for Group Work
We study whether gender influences credit attribution for group work using observational data and two experiments. We use data from academic economists to test whether coauthorship matters differently for tenure for men and women. We find that, conditional on quality and other observables, men are tenured similarly regardless of whether they coauthor or solo author. Women, however, are less likely to receive tenure the more they coauthor. We then…
The effect of co-ethnic social capital on immigrants' labor market integration: A natural experiment
Empirically identifying the causal effect of social capital on immigrants’ economic prospects is a challenging task due to the non-random residential sorting of immigrants into locations with greater opportunities for prior or co-ethnic connections. Our study addresses this selection-bias issue by using a natural-experimental dataset of refugees and other immigrants who were exogenously allocated to their first place of residence by German author…
Employers' social contacts and their hiring behavior in a factorial survey
Tax evasion and income source: A comparative experimental study
Explaining gender differences in tax evasion: The case of Tirana, Albania
Recently, a considerable amount of research has focused on the evidence of gender differences in corruption. Research conducted on another predatory activity, tax evasion, similarly shows strong differences between women's and men's behaviors. This paper tests this finding in a transition country using a unique data set collected from a field survey of households in Tirana, Albania in 2000. Acknowledging that scholars generally explain gender dif…
Financial Satisfaction and (in)formal Sector in a Transition Country
Did You Pay Your Taxes?' How (Not) to Conduct Tax Evasion Surveys in Transition Countries
I am not alone: Understanding public support for the welfare state
This article explores to what extent and how individuals' welfare state attitudes relate to their subjective assessment of the available social support. Using various sociological and sociopsychological theories the authors first provide a theoretical analysis of the micro-macro links between perceived social support (micro), social trust in support availability (macro) and public attitudes towards welfare states (micro). An empirical test based …
Giving Up on the Joneses? The Relationship between Income Inequality and Status-seeking
The objective of this article is to study status-seeking, defined as pursuit for elevated social status, and how it relates to income inequality. Building on sociological, psychological, and economic literature, we formulate two opposing hypotheses suggesting a positive and a negative relationship between income inequality and status-seeking. To test these hypotheses, we use repeated cross-sectional micro-data from the European Social Survey, whi…
Competition and Gender Inequality: A Comprehensive Analysis of Effects and Mechanisms
This study uses data from a series of laboratory experiments to provide a comprehensive analysis of gender differences in performance caused by two different dimensions of competition—rivalry for resources and status ranking. It also examines two mechanisms behind such differences. The results indicate that in the absence of any competitive dimension the performance difference between men and women is not statistically significant at the usual le…
The Effect of Education on Informal Sector Participation in a Post-Communist Country
This article examines participation in the informal economy in Albania, a post-communist country in transition. In particular, it focuses on the effect of education while considering other individual, social, and institutional factors. Two factors that can be central in the educational effect on informal sector participation are considered. The human capital factor, referring to the income-related returns of education, may lead to less participat…
Double standards? Co-authorship and gender bias in early-stage academic evaluations
This article studies gender bias in early-stage academic evaluations in Italy and investigates whether this bias depends on various types of authorship in collaborative work across three academic fields: humanities, economics, and social sciences. We test our hypotheses via a factorial survey (vignette) experiment on a sample from the entire population of associate and full professors employed at Italian public universities in 2019. This is one o…
Status ranking and gender inequality: A cross-country experimental comparison
Clientelism and polarized voting: Empirical evidence
One must take country-specific institutional features into account when analyzing former communist countries’ transformation process to new political institutions. We do so for post-communist Albania, where the regional and cultural polarization that has existed for centuries has evolved to clientelism in the new democracy. We show how clientelistic parties give rise to very particular voting patterns. These reveal major differences across region…
Hands-off? Laissez-faire policies on Covid-19 may exacerbate health inequalities
Purpose This paper establishes an association between income and the likelihood of seeking medical treatment for Covid-19 symptoms in some countries. We provide an explanation for this income effect based on the stringency of government response to the pandemic and the unequal distribution of agency among social classes. Design/methodology/approach The paper makes use of data from the Six-Country Survey on Covid-19 to establish the existence of a…
Enforcing Your Own Human Rights? The Role of Social Norms in Compliance with Human Rights Treaties
Although scholars are increasingly able to explain why states (do not) comply with human rights treaties, the role of social norms in compliance has been neglected. This is remarkable because human rights often directly address social norms. Our study aims to contribute to the existing literature by providing quantitative and qualitative evidence on the relationship between citizens’ social norms and compliance with human rights treaties. The qua…
The Informal Sector in Developed and Less Developed Countries: A Literature Survey
Tax evasion and income source: A comparative experimental study
Explaining gender differences in tax evasion: The case of Tirana, Albania
Recently, a considerable amount of research has focused on the evidence of gender differences in corruption. Research conducted on another predatory activity, tax evasion, similarly shows strong differences between women's and men's behaviors. This paper tests this finding in a transition country using a unique data set collected from a field survey of households in Tirana, Albania in 2000. Acknowledging that scholars generally explain gender dif…
Did You Pay Your Taxes?' How (Not) to Conduct Tax Evasion Surveys in Transition Countries
Clientelism and polarized voting: Empirical evidence
One must take country-specific institutional features into account when analyzing former communist countries’ transformation process to new political institutions. We do so for post-communist Albania, where the regional and cultural polarization that has existed for centuries has evolved to clientelism in the new democracy. We show how clientelistic parties give rise to very particular voting patterns. These reveal major differences across region…
Financial Satisfaction and (in)formal Sector in a Transition Country
I am not alone: Understanding public support for the welfare state
This article explores to what extent and how individuals' welfare state attitudes relate to their subjective assessment of the available social support. Using various sociological and sociopsychological theories the authors first provide a theoretical analysis of the micro-macro links between perceived social support (micro), social trust in support availability (macro) and public attitudes towards welfare states (micro). An empirical test based …
The emergence of employer information networks in an experimental labor market
The Effect of Education on Informal Sector Participation in a Post-Communist Country
This article examines participation in the informal economy in Albania, a post-communist country in transition. In particular, it focuses on the effect of education while considering other individual, social, and institutional factors. Two factors that can be central in the educational effect on informal sector participation are considered. The human capital factor, referring to the income-related returns of education, may lead to less participat…
Employers' social contacts and their hiring behavior in a factorial survey
The Experimental Approach to Studying Employers' Hiring Behavior
This essay advocates the use of experimental methods to study labor demand. Experimentation contributes to a better understanding of employers' hiring behavior by establishing what is cause and what is effect in observed behavior and allows for a better grip on the mechanisms underlying the hiring process. Given the difficulties in obtaining information from employers, experiments offer a fruitful alternative route to collecting information about…
The Demand Side of Hiring: Employers in the Labor Market
Sociological research on labor markets has focused most of its attention on the supply side of the labor market, that is, the characteristics of job seekers and job incumbents. Despite its pivotal and we believe primary role in labor market processes, the demand side, in particular the hiring decisions made by employers, has received less attention. The employment relationship, however, comprises both the demand and supply sides, as well as the m…
Giving Up on the Joneses? The Relationship between Income Inequality and Status-seeking
The objective of this article is to study status-seeking, defined as pursuit for elevated social status, and how it relates to income inequality. Building on sociological, psychological, and economic literature, we formulate two opposing hypotheses suggesting a positive and a negative relationship between income inequality and status-seeking. To test these hypotheses, we use repeated cross-sectional micro-data from the European Social Survey, whi…
Enforcing Your Own Human Rights? The Role of Social Norms in Compliance with Human Rights Treaties
Although scholars are increasingly able to explain why states (do not) comply with human rights treaties, the role of social norms in compliance has been neglected. This is remarkable because human rights often directly address social norms. Our study aims to contribute to the existing literature by providing quantitative and qualitative evidence on the relationship between citizens’ social norms and compliance with human rights treaties. The qua…
Status ranking and gender inequality: A cross-country experimental comparison
Gender Differences in Recognition for Group Work
We study whether gender influences credit attribution for group work using observational data and two experiments. We use data from academic economists to test whether coauthorship matters differently for tenure for men and women. We find that, conditional on quality and other observables, men are tenured similarly regardless of whether they coauthor or solo author. Women, however, are less likely to receive tenure the more they coauthor. We then…
Anticipating Peer Ranking Causes Hormonal Adaptations That Benefit Cognitive Performance
Performance ranking is common across a range of professional and recreational domains. Even when it has no economic consequences but does order people in terms of their social standing, anticipating such performance ranking may affect how people feel and perform. We examined this possibility by asking human subjects to execute a simple cognitive task while anticipating their performance being ranked by an outside evaluator. We measured baseline a…
Who Will Do It? Volunteering to Change Cooperation Rules in a Heterogeneous Population
We study whether and when a second-order collective action problem, like the change of existing formal rules governing cooperation, can be resolved to ultimately solve first-order collective good dilemmas. We do so by examining the conditions under which individuals change cooperation rules when both their material incentives to cooperate and their social preferences for outcome distributions differ. Our experimental findings show that proselfs w…
Handbook of Sociological Science: Contributions to Rigorous Sociology
The Handbook of Sociological Science offers a refreshing, integrated perspective on research programs and ongoing developments in sociological science. It highlights key shared theoretical and methodological features, thereby contributing to progress and cumulative growth of sociological knowledge.
The effect of co-ethnic social capital on immigrants' labor market integration: A natural experiment
Empirically identifying the causal effect of social capital on immigrants’ economic prospects is a challenging task due to the non-random residential sorting of immigrants into locations with greater opportunities for prior or co-ethnic connections. Our study addresses this selection-bias issue by using a natural-experimental dataset of refugees and other immigrants who were exogenously allocated to their first place of residence by German author…
Hands-off? Laissez-faire policies on Covid-19 may exacerbate health inequalities
Purpose This paper establishes an association between income and the likelihood of seeking medical treatment for Covid-19 symptoms in some countries. We provide an explanation for this income effect based on the stringency of government response to the pandemic and the unequal distribution of agency among social classes. Design/methodology/approach The paper makes use of data from the Six-Country Survey on Covid-19 to establish the existence of a…
Double standards? Co-authorship and gender bias in early-stage academic evaluations
This article studies gender bias in early-stage academic evaluations in Italy and investigates whether this bias depends on various types of authorship in collaborative work across three academic fields: humanities, economics, and social sciences. We test our hypotheses via a factorial survey (vignette) experiment on a sample from the entire population of associate and full professors employed at Italian public universities in 2019. This is one o…
Competition and Gender Inequality: A Comprehensive Analysis of Effects and Mechanisms
This study uses data from a series of laboratory experiments to provide a comprehensive analysis of gender differences in performance caused by two different dimensions of competition—rivalry for resources and status ranking. It also examines two mechanisms behind such differences. The results indicate that in the absence of any competitive dimension the performance difference between men and women is not statistically significant at the usual le…
Experimental Sociology: Outline of a Scientific Field
Experiments have gained prominence in sociology in recent years. Increased interest in testing causal theories through experimental designs has ignited a debate about which experimental designs can facilitate scientific progress in sociology. This book discusses the implications of research interests for the design of experiments, identifies points of commonality and disagreement among the different perspectives within sociology, and elaborates o…
Choice homophily on social origin and race: Experimental evidence from a US university
Economics (16 works) · Sociology (12 works) · Political science (10 works) · Psychology (9 works) · Experimental Behavioral Economics Studies (8 works) · Computer Science (7 works) · Medicine (7 works) · Social Psychology (7 works) · Business (6 works) · Demographic economics (6 works)