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Capabilities, Competition and Innovation Seminars

Selecting the Best: The Persistent Effects of Luck

Margaret Meyer (University of Oxford)


Thursday 17 October 2024 13:45 - 15:00

MAR 6.33, 6th floor, The Marshall Building, 44 Lincoln's Inn Fields, London WC2A 3LY

About this event

We analyze a model of organizational learning where agents’ performance reflects time-invariant unobservable ability, privately-chosen effort, and noise. Our main result is that, even when performance is almost entirely random, maximizing the probability of identifying the best agent (``selective efficiency') requires biasing final selection in favor of early winners. Making luck persistent, e.g. through fast-tracks, is thus rationalized by the pursuit of selective efficiency. Agents' strategic efforts amplify the persistence of luck. Organizational learning also affects the persistence of initial advantages stemming from identity. Identity-dependent biases, e.g. gender-specific mentoring, create incentives that make selection both more efficient and more equitable


Participants are expected to adhere to the CEP Events Code of Conduct.


Directions

This event will take place in MAR 6.33, 6th floor, The Marshall Building, 44 Lincoln's Inn Fields, London WC2A 3LY.

The building is labelled MAR on the LSE campus map. You can also find us on Google Maps. For further information, go to contact us.

This series is part of the CEP's Growth programme.