The importance of understanding the systematic differences between group and individual decisions has been well recognized in the literature. However, the vast majority of empirical evidence on this issue is derived from laboratory experiments, and hence does not reflect professional incentives and career concerns, both of which may play a crucial role. To fill this gap, I exploit a unique regulatory change that exogenously decreased the number of presiding arbitrators from three to one for a specific class of cases in the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority arbitration as well as an original data set of arbitration awards. The findings indicate that sole arbitrators tend to render more moderate awards when compared to panels of three arbitrators. Adding arbitrator fixed-effects to the model confirms that this tendency is also present within arbitrators, implying that the same arbitrators are inclined towards more extreme "all or nothing" decisions when in groups. This finding rules out the possibility that the effect is driven by differences in the selection of arbitrators into panels. Rather, evidence supports a novel explanation of the polarization of groups: namely, individuals' concerns about adverse effects of extreme decisions on their reputation are mitigated within groups, in which individual opinions are at least partially obscured.

Women's time-limited fertility window, compared to men's longer period of fecundity, could be a key constraint in shaping the gender gap in career choices and hence outcomes. Israel's 1994 policy change that made in-vitro fertilization free provides a natural experiment for examining how fertility time horizons impact women's investment choices. We find that following the policy change women complete more college and graduate education. We then present evidence suggesting that these larger investments contributed to better labor market outcomes, reducing the gender gap in career achievement. This further implies that persistent labor market inequality may be partly rooted in biological asymmetries.

Israel’s 1994 adoption of free in vitro fertilization (IVF) provides a natural experiment for how fertility time horizons impact women’s marriage timing and other outcomes. We find a substantial increase in average age at first marriage following the policy change, using both men and Arab-Israeli women as comparison groups. This shift appears to be driven by both increased marriages by older women and younger women delaying marriage. Age at first birth also increased. Placebo and robustness checks help pinpoint IVF as the source of the change. Our findings suggest age-limited fertility materially impacts women’s life timing and outcomes relative to men. (JEL J12, J13, J16)

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