Benjamin Enke

Bio

Curriculum Vitae

My research is in behavioral and experimental economics, including applications in cultural economics and political economy.

I received my Ph.D. in 2016 from the University of Bonn and subsequently joined Harvard’s Economics Department. At Harvard, I teach a Ph.D. course on Experimental Economics and an undergraduate class on Economics and Morality.

Reviews and Perspectives

Moral Boundaries

Annual Review of Economics , 2024, vol. 16 (1), pp. 133-157. [PDF]

'Morality and Political Economy' from the Vantage Point of Economics

PNAS Nexus , 2024, vol. 3 (10). [PDF]

Handbook of Culture and Economic Behavior

(Co-edited with Paola Giuliano, Nathan Nunn and Leonard Wantchekon)

To appear in Elsevier Handbooks in Economics . [Table of Contents]

Publications and Accepted Papers

Capturing the Complexity of Human Strategic Decision-Making with Machine Learning

(with Jian-Qiao Zhu, Joshua Peterson and Thomas Griffiths)

Forthcoming, Nature Human Behaviour . [PDF]

Complexity and Time

(with Thomas Graeber and Ryan Oprea)

Forthcoming, Journal of the European Economic Association . [PDF]

Values as Luxury Goods and Political Behavior

(with Mattias Polborn and Alex Wu)

Forthcoming, Journal of the European Economic Association . [PDF]

Universalism: Global Evidence

(with Alexander Cappelen and Bertil Tungodden)

American Economic Review , 2025, vol. 115 (1), pp. 43-76. [PDF]

Universalism and Political Representation: Evidence from the Field

(with Raymond Fisman, Luis Mota Freitas and Steven Sun)

American Economic Review: Insights , 2024, vol. 6 (2), pp. 214-229. [PDF]

Associative Memory, Beliefs and Market Interactions

(with Frederik Schwerter and Florian Zimmermann)

Journal of Financial Economics , 2024, vol. (157), 103853. [PDF]

Cognitive Uncertainty

(with Thomas Graeber)

Quarterly Journal of Economics , 2023, vol. 138 (4), pp. 2021-2067 (Lead Article). [PDF] [VOX] [UNDP column]

Moral Universalism and the Structure of Ideology

(with Ricardo Rodriguez-Padilla and Florian Zimmermann)

Review of Economic Studies , 2023, vol. 90 (4), pp. 1934-1962. [PDF] [econimate video]

Cognitive Biases: Mistakes or Missing Stakes?

(with Uri Gneezy, Brian Hall, David Martin, Vadim Nelidov, Theo Offerman, and Jeroen van de Ven)

Review of Economics and Statistics , 2023, vol. 105 (4), pp. 818-832. [PDF]

Confidence, Self-Selection and Bias in the Aggregate

(with Thomas Graeber and Ryan Oprea)

American Economic Review , 2023, vol. 113 (7), pp. 1933-1966. [PDF]

Market Exposure and Human Morality

Nature Human Behaviour , 2023, vol. 7 (1), pp. 134-141. [PDF]

Patience and Comparative Development

(with Uwe Sunde, Thomas Dohmen, Armin Falk, David Huffman, and Gerrit Meyerheim)

Review of Economic Studies , 2022, vol. 89(10), pp. 2806–2840. [PDF]

Moral Universalism: Measurement and Economic Relevance

(with Ricardo Rodriguez-Padilla and Florian Zimmermann)

Management Science , 2022, vol. 68(5), pp. 3590-3603. [PDF] [Qualtrics files]

Confidence and Central Tendency in Perceptual Judgment

(with Yang Xiang, Thomas Graeber, and Samuel Gershman)

Attention, Perception & Psychophysics , 2021, 83, pp. 3024-3034. [PDF]

Moral Values and Voting

Journal of Political Economy , 2020, vol. 128(10), pp. 3679-3729 (Lead Article). [PDF] [microeconomic insights]

What You See Is All There Is

Quarterly Journal of Economics , 2020, vol. 135(3), pp. 1363-1398. [PDF] [Version 09/2017]

Ancient Origins of the Global Variation in Economic Preferences

(with Anke Becker and Armin Falk)

AEA Papers & Proceedings , 2020, vol. 110, pp. 319-323. [PDF]

Kinship, Cooperation, and the Evolution of Moral Systems

Quarterly Journal of Economics , 2019, vol. 134(2), pp. 953-1019. [PDF] [VOX] [CESifo Award]

Correlation Neglect in Belief Formation

(with Florian Zimmermann)

Review of Economic Studies , 2019, vol. 86(1), pp. 313-332. [PDF]

Global Evidence on Economic Preferences

(with Armin Falk, Anke Becker, Thomas Dohmen, David Huffman, and Uwe Sunde)

Quarterly Journal of Economics , 2018, vol. 133(4), pp. 1645-1692 (Lead Article). [PDF] [GPS website]

The Precision of Subjective Data and the Explanatory Power of Economic Models

(with Tilman Drerup and Hans-Martin von Gaudecker)

Journal of Econometrics , 2017, vol. 200(2), pp. 378-389. [PDF]

Working Papers

Herding, Warfare and a Culture of Honor: Global Evidence

(with Yiming Cao, Armin Falk, Paola Giuliano and Nathan Nunn)

Revise and resubmit, American Economic Review . [PDF]

Quantifying Lottery Choice Complexity

(with Cassidy Shubatt)

Revise and resubmit, Econometrica . [PDF] [Code]

Behavioral Attenuation

(with Thomas Graeber, Ryan Oprea and Jeffrey Yang)

Working Paper . [PDF]