Maike Schlosser

Welcome

I am a Ph.D. candidate in Economics at the University of Konstanz, Germany, supervised by Prof. Christina Felfe (Chair of Applied Microeconomics).

I am an applied microeconomist working on education, discrimination, and the formation of social preferences. My research asks where group-based biases come from, how they shape consequential decisions, and whether education can attenuate them — questions I study in settings ranging from preschools to law schools, using field, lab-in-the-field, and survey experiments.

I received the 2025 University of Konstanz Award for Teaching Excellence (LUKS), naming me the best lecturer in the Department of Economics.

I will visit Cornell University with Seth Sanders in August/September 2026.

Contact

Affiliation

University of Konstanz
Department of Economics

Email

maike.schlosser@uni-konstanz.de

Address

Universitätsstraße 10
78464 Konstanz, Germany

Research

Work in Progress

Job Market Paper

From the Courtroom to the Classroom: Evidence of Biased Legal Decision-Making in Law School

with Lennart Goldemann (joint Ph.D. project)

Extensive research documents ethnicity- and gender-based disparities in judicial decision-making, a puzzling finding given legal professionals' rigorous training in evidence-based reasoning. Whether these disparities originate in professional practice or already exist during legal training remains unknown. We address this via a survey experiment with about 3,000 law students across 19 German universities. We randomly assign students to treatment or control versions of five criminal-law cases in which only the main subject's name is varied to signal ethnicity or gender. We find that subjects with ethnic-minority names receive significantly harsher, faster, and more confident evaluations than those with German-sounding names, while female subjects are evaluated more leniently than men; both patterns carry through to sentencing recommendations. Effect sizes vary by offense type, and students exhibit in-group biases. Critically, bias magnitude does not decline with training, indicating current legal education does not correct these disparities and curriculum reform may be needed.

RCT Registry →

In Progress

A Journey to Unity — A Teacher-led Preschool Program to Foster Social Cohesion

with Pia Schilling, Theresia Hummel, Patrick Schneider, Judith Saurer, Christina Felfe

RCT Registry →

In Progress

Childsteps Towards Universalism – Roadblocks on the Way

with Christina Felfe, Jeanine Grütter, Judith Saurer, Pia Schilling, Patrick Schneider, Milan Spendel

In Progress

Immigrant Peer Exposure and Native Children's Social Preferences: Evidence from German Preschools

with Pia Schilling, Christina Felfe, Patrick Schneider, Judith Saurer

Teaching

I received the 2025 University of Konstanz Award for Teaching Excellence (LUKS), naming me the best lecturer in the Department of Economics.

University of Konstanz

Microeconomics

Bachelor · Teaching award based on student evaluations (2024); Best Lecturer Award of Department of Economics (2025)

2023–2026
Data Collection in the Field

Bachelor

2023–2025

University of Würzburg

Public Policy

Bachelor

2021–2023

Presentations

2026

Scheduled: CEMIR Junior Workshop on Migration Research 2026 (Munich, Germany)
Scheduled: Center for Diversity in Law: Workshop „Hypothesenbildung zu sozialer Selektivität im Rechtsstab“ (invited, Frankfurt, Germany)
Scheduled: Jahrestagung 2026 (Behavioral Economics) Verein für Socialpolitik (Innsbruck, Austria)
Internal Seminar, Cornell University (US)
Behavioral Workshop, Stuttgart University (Germany)
Annual Conference of the European Society for Population Economics (ESPE) (Espoo, Finland)
Cluster of Excellence ECONtribute LawEcon Seminar, University of Bonn (invited, Germany)
14th Thurgau Experimental Economics Meeting on Polarized Worlds (Switzerland)
Swiss Education Network Workshop, University of Zurich (Switzerland)
Microeconomics Day at Thurgau Wirtschaftsinstitut, University of Konstanz (Germany)
Alpine Population Conference (Italy)
Ski and Labor Conference (invited, Switzerland)

2025

Dondena-Cornell Gathering (invited, Italy)
Behavioral Workshop, Ulm University (Germany)
EBS University Wiesbaden (invited, Germany)
Technical University Munich Workshop on Field Experiments (Germany)
Basel-Konstanz Retreat (Germany)

2024

1st Summer School in Experimental and Behavioral Economics, European Economic Review (Crete)
Brown Bag Seminar, University of Konstanz (Germany)

2023

Brown Bag Seminar, University of Konstanz (Germany)
Empirical Microeconomics Seminar, University of Konstanz (Germany)

2022

Brown Bag Seminar, University of Würzburg (Germany)