Benjamin Enke

Bio

Curriculum Vitae

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

A first line of my work studies the economic relevance of cognitive uncertainty, showing how its measurement brings together several behavioral economics anomalies in consumer decision making, and simultaneously facilitates insights about which anomalies and biases affect market outcomes. This body of work also includes experimental and machine learning research on extracting which features make decision problems complex. A second line of work studies the political economy consequences of heterogeneity in moral values. Finally, a third line of work consists of large-scale multinational surveys that measure the distribution of economic and moral preferences across cultures. 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.

My teaching (current and past) includes Experimental Economics, Behavioral Economics, Cognitive Economics, and a course on Morality and Economics 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]

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

The Cognitive Turn in Behavioral Economics

[PDF]

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

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]