Benjamin Enke

Bio

Curriculum Vitae

My research is interdisciplinary in nature, with a focus on behavioral economics, cultural economics, political economy and human-AI interaction. Methodologically, my work relies on a combination of experiments, multinational surveys, formal theory, and machine learning.

I’m a recipient of a 2021 Alfred P. Sloan Research Fellowship and of the 2017 Distinguished CESifo Affiliate Award, and gave the Zeuthen Lectures at the University of Copenhagen in 2025.

Below is a chronological list of publications and current working papers. The following tabs offer an overview of my work.

My teaching (current and past) includes Experimental Economics, Behavioral Economics, Cognitive Economics, and a course on Economics and Morality that I developed a few years ago.

Students can sign up for office hours here.

Working Papers

Market Prices as a Moral Currency

[PDF]

Reference Points as Information

(with Mark Dean, Thomas Graeber and Pietro Ortoleva)

[PDF]

The Cognitive Economics of Agentic AI

(with Thomas Graeber)

Comparisons

(with Thomas Graeber)

[PDF]

A Note on 'When Are Decisions Improvable? An Evaluation of Diagnostic Methods'

(with Thomas Graeber)

[PDF]

Quantifying Lottery Choice Complexity

(with Cassidy Shubatt)

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

Reviews and Perspectives

Handbook of Culture and Economic Behavior

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

Elsevier Handbooks in Economics , 2026-2027. [Volume 1]

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]

Publications and Accepted Papers

Behavioral Attenuation

(with Thomas Graeber, Ryan Oprea and Jeffrey Yang)

Forthcoming, Journal of Political Economy . [PDF]

Herding, Armed Conflict, and a Culture of Honor: Global Evidence

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

Conditionally accepted, American Economic Review . [PDF]

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

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

Nature Human Behaviour , 2025, vol. 9 (10), pp. 2114-2120. [PDF] [Data on 2,400 strategic two-player games]

Complexity and Time

(with Thomas Graeber and Ryan Oprea)

Journal of the European Economic Association , 2025, vol. 23 (5), pp. 1838–1867. [PDF]

Values as Luxury Goods and Political Behavior

(with Mattias Polborn and Alex Wu)

Journal of the European Economic Association , 2025, vol. 23 (5), pp. 1635–1668. [PDF]

Universalism: Global Evidence

(with Alexander Cappelen and Bertil Tungodden)

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

Trust in Scientists and Their Role in Society Across 68 Countries

(with a many-labs team led by Viktoria Cologna and Niels Mede)

Nature Human Behaviour , 2025, vol. 9 (1), pp. 713-720. [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]