Bio
Curriculum Vitae
My research is in behavioral and experimental economics and focuses on two lines of inquiry. First, experimental work on bounded rationality in belief formation and choice. Second, experimental and survey-based research on moral universalism (and cultural variation more generally).
I received my Ph.D. in 2016 from the University of Bonn and subsequently joined Harvard’s Economics Department as Assistant Professor. Since 2018, I also serve as Associate Editor at the Journal of the European Economic Association.
At Harvard, I teach a Ph.D. course on Experimental Economics and an undergraduate class on Economics and Morality; please see here for more information. Students can sign up for office hours here.
Publications
Moral Values and Voting
Forthcoming, Journal of Political Economy
Abstract (click to expand): This paper studies the supply of and demand for moral values in recent U.S. presidential elections. Using a combination of large-scale survey data and text analyses, I find support for the hypothesis that both voters and politicians exhibit heterogeneity in their emphasis on “universal” relative to “communal” moral values, and that politicians’ vote shares partly reflect the extent to which their moral appeal matches the values of the electorate. Over the last decade, Americans’ values have become increasingly communal – especially in rural areas – which generated increased moral polarization and is associated with changes in voting patterns across space.
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[county-level moral values data]
What You See Is All There Is
Forthcoming, Quarterly Journal of Economics
Abstract (click to expand): News reports and communication are inherently constrained by space, time, and attention. As a result, news sources often condition the decision of whether or not to share a piece of information on the similarity between the signal and the prior belief of the audience, so that the audience needs to draw inferences from a selected sample. This paper experimentally studies how people form beliefs in these contexts, in particular the mechanisms behind errors in statistical reasoning. I document that a substantial fraction of experimental participants updates beliefs by exclusively taking into account information that is right in front of them, hence neglecting selection effects. A series of treatments aimed at identifying mechanisms document that neglect is largely driven by subjects maintaining a misspecified mental model of the known information environment, according to which selection does not even come to mind. This mental model of “what you see is all there is” is not constant but predictably responds to perhaps seemingly innocuous variations in the environment, including (i) the computational complexity of the decision problem, and (ii) whether selection problems arise due to a deliberate choice between information sources or as a mechanical by-product of another decision. These results point to the context-dependence of mental models and the resulting errors in belief updating.
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[Version 09/2017]
Ancient Origins of the Global Variation in Economic Preferences
AEA Papers & Proceedings, 2020, vol. 110, pp. 319-323
Abstract (click to expand): This paper shows that contemporary population-level heterogeneity in risk aversion, time preference, altruism, positive reciprocity, negative reciprocity, and trust partly traces back to the structure of the migration patterns of our very early ancestors. To document this pattern, we link differences in preferences between populations to the length of time elapsed since the ancestors of the respective groups broke apart from each other, as proxied by genetic and linguistic distance measures. Preference differences are significantly increasing in ancestral distance in both cross-country regressions and within-country analyses across groups of migrants.
[PDF]
[online appendix]
Kinship, Cooperation, and the Evolution of Moral Systems
Quarterly Journal of Economics, 2019, vol. 134(2), pp. 953-1019.
Abstract (click to expand): Across the social sciences, a key question is how societies manage to enforce cooperative behavior in social dilemmas such as public goods provision or bilateral trade. According to an influential body of theories in psychology, anthropology, and evolutionary biology, the answer is that humans have evolved moral systems: packages of functional psychological and biological mechanisms that regulate economic behavior, including a belief in moralizing gods; moral values; negative reciprocity; and emotions of shame, guilt, and disgust. Based on a stylized model, this article empirically studies the structure and evolution of these moral traits as a function of historical heterogeneity in extended kinship relationships. The evidence shows that societies with a historically tightly knit kinship structure regulate behavior through communal moral values, revenge taking, emotions of external shame, and notions of purity and disgust. In loose kinship societies, on the other hand, cooperation appears to be enforced through universal moral values, internalized guilt, altruistic punishment, and an apparent rise and fall of moralizing religions. These patterns point to the presence of internally consistent but culturally variable functional moral systems. Consistent with the model, the relationship between kinship ties, economic development, and the structure of the mediating moral systems amplified over time.
[PDF]
[VOX column]
[Distinguished CESifo Affiliate Award]
[data and code]
Correlation Neglect in Belief Formation
(with Florian Zimmermann)
Review of Economic Studies, 2019, vol. 86(1), pp. 313-332.
Abstract (click to expand): Many information structures generate correlated rather than mutually independent signals, the news media being a prime example. This article provides experimental evidence that many people neglect the resulting double-counting problem in the updating process. In consequence, beliefs are too sensitive to the ubiquitous “telling and re-telling of stories” and exhibit excessive swings. We identify substantial and systematic heterogeneity in the presence of the bias and investigate the underlying mechanisms. The evidence points to the paramount importance of complexity in combination with people’s problems in identifying and thinking through the correlation. Even though most participants in principle have the computational skills that are necessary to develop rational beliefs, many approach the problem in a wrong way when the environment is moderately complex. Thus, experimentally nudging people’s focus towards the correlation and the underlying independent signals has large effects on beliefs.
[PDF]
[online appendix]
[experimental instructions]
[data and code]
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).
Abstract (click to expand): This article studies the global variation in economic preferences. For this purpose, we present the Global Preference Survey (GPS), an experimentally validated survey data set of time preference, risk preference, positive and negative reciprocity, altruism, and trust from 80,000 people in 76 countries. The data reveal substantial heterogeneity in preferences across countries, but even larger within-country heterogeneity. Across individuals, preferences vary with age, gender, and cognitive ability, yet these relationships appear partly country specific. At the country level, the data reveal correlations between preferences and biogeoraphic and cultural variables, such as agricultural suitability, language structure, and religion. Variation in preferences is also correlated with economic outcomes and behaviors. Within countries and subnational regions, preferences are linked to individual savings decisions, labor market choices, and prosocial behaviors. Across countries, preferences vary with aggregate outcomes ranging from per capita income, to entrepreneurial activities, to the frequency of armed conflicts.
[PDF]
[online appendix]
[Global Preferences Survey website and data]
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.
Abstract (click to expand): Subjective expectations are important primitives in many economic models, yet their direct measurement often yields imprecise and inconsistent data. This has previously been treated as a pure measurement error problem. In contrast, this paper argues that the individual-level precision of such data may reflect the structure of the underlying decision process. We estimate a semiparametric double index model on data specifically collected for this purpose and show that stock market participation decisions exhibit little variation in economic model primitives when individuals provide error-ridden belief statements. In contrast, beliefs and risk preferences predict strong variation in stock market participation for individuals who report precise expectations measures.
[PDF]
[online appendix]
Working Papers
Patience and Comparative Development
(with Thomas Dohmen, Armin Falk, David Huffman, and Uwe Sunde)
Revise and resubmit, Review of Economic Studies
Abstract (click to expand): This paper studies the role of heterogeneity in patience for comparative development. The empirical analysis is based on a simple OLG model in which patience drives the accumulation of physical capital, human capital, productivity improvements, and hence income. Based on a globally representative dataset on patience in 76 countries, we study the implications of the model through a combination of reduced-form estimations and simulations. In the data, patience is strongly correlated with income levels, income growth, and the accumulation of physical capital, human capital, and productivity. These relationships hold across countries, sub- national regions, and individuals. In the reduced-form analyses, the quantitative magnitude of the relationship between patience and income strongly increases in the level of aggregation. A simple parameterized version of the model generates comparable aggregation effects as a result of production complementarities and equilibrium effects, and illustrates that variation in preference endowments can account for a considerable part of the observed variation in per capita income.
[PDF]
Associative Memory and Belief Formation
(with Frederik Schwerter and Florian Zimmermann)
Abstract (click to expand): Information is often embedded in memorable contexts, which may cue the asymmetric recall of similar past news through associative memory. We design a theory-driven experiment, in which participants observe signals about hypothetical companies. Here, identical signal realizations are communicated with identical contexts: stories and images. Because participants asymmetrically remember those past signals that get cued by the current context, beliefs systematically overreact. This overreaction depends in predictable ways on the signal history; the correlation between signals and contexts; and the scope for forgetting and associative memory. We quantify these results by structurally estimating a model of associative recall.
[PDF]
Cognitive Uncertainty
(with Thomas Graeber)
Abstract (click to expand): This paper introduces a formal definition and an experimental measurement of the concept of cognitive uncertainty: people's subjective uncertainty about what the optimal action is. This concept allows us to bring together and partially explain a set of behavioral anomalies identified across four distinct domains of decision-making: choice under risk, choice under ambiguity, belief updating, and survey expectations about economic variables. In each of these domains, behavior in experiments and surveys tends to be insensitive to variation in probabilities, as in the classical probability weighting function. Building on existing models of noisy Bayesian cognition, we formally propose that cognitive uncertainty generates these patterns by inducing people to compress probabilities towards a mental default of 50:50. We document experimentally that the responses of individuals with higher cognitive uncertainty indeed exhibit stronger compression of probabilities in choice under risk and ambiguity, belief updating, and survey expectations. Our framework makes predictions that we test using exogenous manipulations of both cognitive uncertainty and the location of the mental default. The results provide causal evidence for the role of cognitive uncertainty in belief formation and choice, which we quantify through structural estimations.
[PDF]
[VOX column]
Moral Universalism and the Structure of Ideology
(with Ricardo Rodriguez-Padilla and Florian Zimmermann)
Abstract (click to expand): Throughout the Western world, people's policy preferences are correlated across domains in a strikingly similar fashion. Based on a simple model, we propose that what partly explains the particular internal structure of political ideology is heterogeneity in moral universalism: the extent to which an individual's altruism and trust remain constant as social distance increases. In representative surveys with 15,000 respondents, we measure universalism using structured choice tasks. In the data, heterogeneity in universalism descriptively explains a substantial share of desired government spending levels for welfare, affirmative action, environmental protection, foreign aid, health care, military, border control, and law enforcement. Moreover, the canonical left-right divide on issues such as the military or redistribution reverses depending on whether participants evaluate more or less universalist versions of these policies. These patterns hold in the United States, Australia, Germany, France, and Sweden, but not outside the West. We confirm the idea of higher universalism among the Western political left by estimating the universalism of U.S. regions using large-scale donation data and linking this measure to local vote shares.
[PDF]
Moral Universalism: Measurement and Heterogeneity
(with Ricardo Rodriguez-Padilla and Florian Zimmermann)
Abstract (click to expand): This paper introduces a new set of simple experimentally-validated survey games to measure moral universalism: the extent to which people exhibit the same level of altruism and trust towards strangers as towards in-group members. In a representative sample of the U.S. population, an individual's degree of universalism is largely a domain-general trait. Older people, men, whites, the rich, the rural, and the religious exhibit less universalist preferences and beliefs. Looking at economic behaviors and outcomes, universalists donate less money locally but more globally, are less likely to exhibit home bias in equity and educational investments, have fewer friends, and report being more lonely.
[PDF]
[Qualtrics survey files to implement universalism games]
Cognitive Biases: Mistakes or Missing Stakes?
(with Uri Gneezy, Brian Hall, David Martin, Vadim Nelidov, Theo Offerman, and Jeroen van de Ven)
Abstract (click to expand): Despite decades of research on heuristics and biases, empirical evidence on the effect of large incentives -- as present in relevant economic decisions -- on cognitive biases is scant. This paper tests the effect of incentives on four widely documented biases: base rate neglect, anchoring, failure of contingent thinking, and intuitive reasoning in the Cognitive Reflection Test. In pre-registered laboratory experiments with 1,236 college students in Nairobi, we implement three incentive levels: no incentives, standard lab payments, and very high incentives that increase the stakes by a factor of 100 to more than a monthly income. We find that cognitive effort as measured by response times increases by 40% with very high stakes. Performance, on the other hand, improves very mildly or not at all as incentives increase, with the largest improvements due to a reduced reliance on intuitions. In none of the tasks are very high stakes sufficient to de-bias participants, or come even close to doing so. These results contrast with expert predictions that forecast larger performance improvements.
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