Ashley Litwin

• Ashley Litwin, Gender Bias and Differential Belief Updating. Abstract

  I study whether people respond differently to identically informative signals about men and women. To ensure signals convey identical information, I develop a novel experimental design that fully fixes both prior beliefs and signal distributions across gender. In an experiment with 3,204 subjects, individuals respond dramatically to the gender of the signal-sender. Subjects are more likely to violate Bayes’ Rule, failing to update or updating in the wrong direction, after learning a woman succeeded or a man failed. They update more rationally after learning a man succeeded or a woman failed. Additional treatments explore how to mitigate these gendered mistakes.

• Ashley Litwin, Judd B. Kessler, Muriel Niederle, Hannu Kivimaki, Please Take A Minute: How Prosocial Choices Change with Deliberation. Abstract

  People often make decisions quickly when presented with a choice. Are their intuitive answers a good approximation of what they would choose if they took more time to decide? We explore how individuals’ choices change with deliberation and find that later choices systematically differ from early ones. We focus on prosocial decisions and find that individuals’ choices respond more to social efficiency as they deliberate over the course of a minute. Our results call into question the use of revealed preference for welfare when prosocial choices are made quickly and provide guidance to policy makers and charities.

• Ashley Litwin and Corinne Low (Forthcoming), Measuring Discrimination with Experiments. Abstract

  Discrimination based on group membership has been documented in numerous settings and on the basis of a diverse set of characteristics. This article reviews the key experimental methods used by economists to measure discrimination, provide insights on its sources, and mitigate its effects. We first summarize common lab experimental methods for detecting discrimination, including economic games and stylized hiring experiments. We then discuss field experimental methods, including audit studies, correspondence studies, and Incentivized Resume Rating (IRR). Throughout, we emphasize the strengths and weaknesses of both lab and field experiments and provide practical guidance for avoiding common design pitfalls. We conclude with suggestions for future research.

Past Courses

• BEPP1000 - Introductory Economics

  Microeconomics is the study of the behavior of households and firms, whose collective decisions determine how resources are allocated in a free market economy. We will study when markets are likely to produce "efficient" outcomes, and when government intervention may improve on or harm the competitive market outcome. We will use economic theory to analyze issues like a gas tax to change reliance on oil, minimum wages to increase salaries of the working poor, and government subsidies to increase education. Macroeconomics is the study of the economy as a whole. We will understand how the size of the US economy is determined, how unemployment is measured, how inflation affects life. We will look at policy options that the government and the Federal Reserve Bank face, and discuss pros and cons of their actions. Economic arguments are often used in debates about government policies, discussion of business strategies, and many of life's other arenas. The goal of the course is to teach you to "think like an economist," which I hope will help you to understand the world around you, make better economic decisions in your own life, and be a more informed citizen and voter.

• BEPP2500 - Managerial Economics

  This course will introduce you to "managerial economics" which is the application of microeconomic theory to managerial decision-making. Microeconomic theory is a remarkably useful body of ideas for understanding and analyzing the behavior of individuals and firms in a variety of economic settings. The goal of the course is for you to understand this body of theory well enough so that you can effectively analyze managerial (and other) problems in an economic framework. While this is a "tools" course, we will cover many real-world applications, particularly business applications, so that you can witness the usefulness of these tools and acquire the skills to use them yourself. We will depart from the usual microeconomic theory course by giving more emphasis to prescription: What should a manager do in order to achieve some objective? That course deliverable is to compare with description: Why do firms and consumers act the way they do? The latter will still be quite prominent in this course because only by understanding how other firms and customers behave can a manager determine what is beswt for him or her to do. Strategic interaction is explored both in product markets and auctions. Finally, the challenges created by asymmetric information - both in the market and within the firm - are investigated.

Knowledge @ Wharton

• Affordable Care Act Subsidies, Coverage Losses, and What Comes Next, Knowledge @ Wharton - 01/23/2026
• CEO of GrowthLoop, Chris O’Neill, Knowledge @ Wharton - 01/22/2026
• The Unintended Consequences of Affordable Housing Lotteries, Knowledge @ Wharton - 01/21/2026
• Inside College Football’s Data-Driven Evolution and Decision-Making, Knowledge @ Wharton - 01/21/2026
• Nobel Laureate Richard Thaler’s New Take on the Classic ‘Winner’s Curse’, Knowledge @ Wharton - 01/20/2026
• Why AI Disclosure Matters at Every Level, Knowledge @ Wharton - 01/20/2026
• Who Gets Replaced by AI and Why?, Knowledge @ Wharton - 01/20/2026
• Real Estate and Housing Market Outlook | Benjamin Keys, Knowledge @ Wharton - 01/20/2026
• Inside Saks Global’s Bankruptcy and the Future of Luxury Retail, Knowledge @ Wharton - 01/16/2026
• CMO of HelloFresh, Jorge Samayoa, Knowledge @ Wharton - 01/15/2026