Discrimination between religious and non-religious groups : evidence from high-stakes exams
Lavy, Victor, Sand, Edith and Shayo, Moses (2022) Discrimination between religious and non-religious groups : evidence from high-stakes exams. Economic Journal, 132 (646). pp. 2308-2324. doi:10.1093/ej/ueac014 ISSN 0013-0133.
WRAP-Discrimination-between-religious-non-religious-groups-evidence-marking-high-stakes-exams-2021.pdf - Accepted Version
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Official URL: https://doi.org/10.1093/ej/ueac014
While religions frequently preach preferential treatment of fellow believers, the magnitude and economic implications of religiosity-based discrimination are largely unknown. Religiosity is often confounded with ethnicity, but it varies even within ethnicities and religious denominations. It is also seldom observed in administrative data. This paper exploits a setting that avoids these limitations. We analyse grading decisions in national matriculation exams in Israel, exploiting unique features that reveal student religiosity to the graders, and grader religiosity to the researcher. We find evidence of ingroup bias between religious and non-religious groups, but in our setting this effect is very small. There seem to be two main reasons. First, religious ingroup bias is limited to male graders only. Moreover, patterns of bunching in the grade distribution suggest the bias is primarily due to the religious—rather than secular—men. This is a small fraction of the grader population. A second potential reason is that many graders live in integrated communities. Our evidence suggests that living and working in close proximity to people with different levels of religiosity attenuates discrimination.
B Philosophy. Psychology. Religion > BL Religion
L Education > LB Theory and practice of education
Faculty of Social Sciences > Economics
Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH):
Religious discrimination -- Israel, Examinations -- Israel -- Interpretation
Economic Journal
8 February 2022 Published
10 August 2021 Accepted
10.1093/ej/ueac014
Reuse Statement (publisher, data, author rights):
This is a pre-copyedited, author-produced version of an article accepted for publication in Economic Journal following peer review. The version of record Victor Lavy, Edith Sand, Moses Shayo, Discrimination Between Religious and Non-Religious Groups: Evidence from Marking High-Stakes Exams, The Economic Journal, 2022;, ueac014, is available online at: https://doi.org/10.1093/ej/ueac014
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RIOXX Funder/Project Grant:
Project/Grant ID
RIOXX Funder Name
Funder ID
323439 European Research Council http://dx.doi.org/10.13039/501100000781
1821/12 Israel Science Foundation http://dx.doi.org/10.13039/501100003977