Rubina Hundal (Gursmeep)

Rubina Hundal (Gursmeep)

Research

Job Market Papers

Discrimination on a Mutable Trait: Labor-Market Penalties for Oral Appearance

When information about productivity is incomplete, visible markers of poverty can act as biased signals that distort hiring and reduce allocative efficiency. I study one such marker, oral appearance, and its effect on early hiring decisions in urban India. Unlike traits such as race or caste, oral appearance is mutable and thus an equilibrium object: individuals choose whether to correct visible deficits based on perceived returns and costs. Poor oral health is common, visible, and remediable, yet it shapes perceptions of traits that matter in the labor market, such as confidence, diligence, and trustworthiness. Using two experiments that replicate the first screening stage, I show that oral appearance creates a distinct and fixable barrier to upward mobility. In the first, synthetic AI faces hold identity constant while toggling oral appearance, and visibly poor teeth lower perceived confidence and predicted wages by about nine percent. In the second, an incentivized resume–rating study with hiring professionals from over 800 firms, the same candidate with poor teeth is significantly less likely to be hired—a penalty about two‑thirds the size of removing a skill certificate. The effect is largest in customer‑facing jobs and is roughly halved after accounting for employers’ incentivized forecasts of coworker and customer reactions, indicating that discrimination mostly reflects Externality‑Mediated Screening rather than beliefs about productivity alone. Survey evidence highlights cost, fear, and low perceived returns as dominant barriers, and simple calculations imply large private returns to basic corrective care. Mobility policies must therefore address appearance‑related constraints alongside traditional investments in skills and education.

Learning by Doing (Work): Experimental Evidence from a School-Based Internship Program in India (with Emma Zhang)

Many low-income youth grow up with little exposure to the world of work, leading to misinformed beliefs about education and employment. We study whether short, school-based internships can improve these beliefs and shape school-to-work transitions. Through a randomized program in more than fifty public schools across Delhi, students were offered 80 hours of after-school work experience at neighborhood shops and service firms. Internship participation increased optimism about the returns to higher education and led students to report more realistic expectations about job-search frictions and low-skill earnings. Willingness to pay for a career-guidance book rose by about 6–8 percent, though estimates are imprecise. Effects are driven largely by girls, who constitute 70 percent of the sample and update their beliefs more strongly, consistent with larger initial constraints on exposure. We find no change in educational aspirations or non-cognitive outcomes, indicating that the intervention operated primarily through improved labor-market information rather than changes in ambition. By correcting miscalibrated beliefs about wages and search frictions, the program reduced informational misallocation in students’ education and career choices. As a result, students’ expectations became more consistent with labor-market realities, making the school-to-work transition more efficient.

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Work in Progress

Language of Violence: Persistence of Origin-Based Social Norms Among Migrant Couples (with Naira Kalra and Oyebola Okunogbe)

We examine how social norms embedded in place of origin shape intimate partner violence (IPV) among migrant couples in India. Using a novel classification of internal migrants based on mother tongue and language belts in the National Family Health Survey, we link historical IPV rates in origin regions to current experiences of migrant wives. A one percentage point increase in IPV prevalence at origin predicts a 0.4 percentage point rise in current IPV, even after rich controls and fixed effects. Mechanism analyses show that intergenerational beliefs, especially wives’ acceptance of wife-beating formed from parental exposure, mediate the persistence of these norms. The results highlight the stickiness of cultural norms across migration and underscore how deeply rooted origin-based norms continue to shape household violence despite new social and institutional environments. Working paper

Sibling Socialization and the Formation of Labor-Force Norms in India (with Emma Zhang)

We study how sibling gender composition shapes labor market aspirations and job application behavior among low-income youth in India. Using data from public school alumni, we find that girls with older sisters are significantly more likely to apply for jobs, while those with older brothers apply less. These patterns persist even when controlling for parental expectations and socioeconomic background. Same-sex siblings appear to act as role models, whereas opposite-sex siblings reinforce traditional norms. The next phase, a large scale randomized trial with 5,000 students, is testing at scale whether structured information and social-learning interventions can recalibrate these norms within households. Preliminary results

Saving with Stocks: Should We Promote Opportunities for Gains or Assuage Worries Around Loss? (with Emma Zhang)

We explore how framing and gender interact in financial risk-taking in the US. Two experiments, one measuring preferences over gains and losses under ambiguity, and another randomizing a group-chat intervention, reveal that men and women differ not in preferences over gains but in aversion to losses. Traders exhibit higher sensitivity to gains than non-traders, while messages emphasizing loss avoidance increase willingness to invest among new investors. A larger follow-up will test whether “loss reassurance” or “gain celebration” framings are more effective at promoting stock market participation. Results

Projects in Development

Aspirations and Inaction Among High-School Students in India (with Rajdev Brar)

We are piloting a randomized field experiment in government schools to study how students make high-stakes education choices at the end of Grade 10. The project tests whether encouraging students to actively search for admissions information, rather than passively receiving it, helps them understand available options and choose academic streams that align better with their own aspirations.

Visa Vows: Migration, Marriage, and Cultural Remittances in India (with Mridul Joshi)

This project asks how female educational migration from Panjab, India to Canada changes marriage-market behavior in sending communities. We combine a lab-in-the-field partner-choice task in IELTS centers with an online audit of matrimonial profiles, randomly varying migration and dowry signals to trace how cross-border mobility reshapes preferences and social status cues.

Does Entrepreneurship Curriculum Create Firm Growth or Perpetuate Microenterprises? (with Emma Zhang)

We study whether school-based entrepreneurship training helps youth move into productive employment or mainly reproduces small self-employment. In Gujarat, we partner with public schools and local firms that recruit from vocational streams, randomizing whether firms see students’ vocational credentials when evaluating applicants to measure the value of these programs in early labor-market entry.

Pre-PhD Research