Publications:
Self-Serving Dishonesty: The Role of Confidence in Driving Dishonesty (with Robert Slonim & Franziska Tausch) [pdf]
Journal of Risk and Uncertainty (2022).
Altruism among Consumers as Donors (with Robert Slonim, Franziska Tausch, and Agnieszka Tymula) [pdf]
Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization (2021), 189, 611-622.
Altruism or Diminishing Marginal Utility? (with Romain Gauriot & Robert Slonim) [pdf]
Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization (2020) ,180, 24–48.
Redesigning the Market for Volunteers: A Donor Registry (with Robert Slonim, Ellen Garbarino, Carmen Wang and Daniel Waller)
[pdf][supplemental material]
Management Science (2020), 66(8), 3528-3541.
We Should Totally Open a Restaurant: How Optimism and Overconfidence Affect Beliefs (with Nicholas W. Papageorge) [pdf] [online appendix]
Journal of Economic Psychology (2018), 67, 177-190.
Waiting To Give: Stated and Revealed Preferences (with Ashley Craig, Ellen Garbarino and Robert Slonim) [pdf] [supplementary material]
Management Science 63.11 (2017): 3672-3690.
Working Papers:
Altruism begets altruism (with Robert Slonim)
Under Review.
CESifo Working Paper 9522 [pdf]
Guided by Bem's (1972) self-perception theory, we design an experiment to ask whether morally-motivated behaviour, e.g., charitable giving, is history-dependent. Using a popular policy nudge, the default option, we exogenously vary altruism "now" and show that the nudge-induced choice to give "now" causes a 41 percentage point (or 200%) increase in the probability of giving "later"; that is, altruism begets altruism. We further show that, consistent with self-perception theory, the choice to behave altruistically "now", rather than the nudge itself, is the crucial element in the causal relationship. These findings are consistent with positive path-dependence, which we interpret as moral consistency.
Increasing Autonomy in Charitable Giving: The Effect of Choosing the Number of Recipients on Donations (with Martina Fehérová, Jana Peliova, Robert Slonim, Maros Servatka)
Revision requested at Economics Letters.
Exploration & Self-Selection: Revisiting Roy (with Barton Hamilton) [pdf]
Evidence from economics, business, psychology and neuroscience demonstrates the fundamental role of the exploration-exploitation trade-off in human behavior, including management, innovation, entrepreneurship, and creativity. Building on Herz et al., (2014), we explore how personality traits and information acquisition interact in an exploration-exploitation game in the laboratory. Roy's (1951) theory of self-selection and comparative advantage provides a road map for our hypotheses and findings. We find that when information type is randomly assigned, there are significant earnings' disparities and interaction effects between personality traits and information type---extraversion and risk tolerance are assets when assigned to one type of information but liabilities when assigned to the other type. However, when individuals select their preferred type of information they recognize their trait-based comparative advantage and choose information optimally, leading, as predicted by theory, to the disappearance of the earnings disparity.
Vice and Virtue Behaviors: Disentangling Substitution and the Direct Effects of the Price of Giving (with Alexander Cornish)
Revision requested at Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization.
CESifo Working Paper 9558 [pdf]
We examine how the U.S. tax policy that encourages charitable giving also affects seemingly unrelated virtue and vice behaviors: exercise and smoking. Using the Panel Study of Income Dynamics, we calculate tax liabilities for 16,712 individuals over 5 waves from which we can construct the price of giving to charity. We estimate the structural model of joint consumption developed by Dinardo & Lemieux (1992, 2001) to disentangle how changes in the price of giving affects exercise and smoking through two distinct channels: (1) an indirect effect through classical substitution effects and (2) a direct effect of the price of giving on the implicit price of exercise and smoking. Contrary to reduced form results which confound these two effects, we find that charitable giving and exercise are substitutes, but that the negative direct effect of the price of giving on exercise dominates. Similarly, charitable giving and smoking are also substitutes, but there is no significant direct effect of the price of giving on smoking behavior. Our results demonstrate the breadth of the effects of tax policy on charitable giving and suggest how policy may be more efficiently designed to increase virtuous behaviors.
In Progress:
Learning to Give: Professional versus Consumer Reviews
We estimate and compare the effect of information from professional versus consumer reviews on consumer behavior. We do so in a pro-social context and examine how information about a charity's effectiveness impacts willingness to donate. We move beyond the existing literature to examine how two distinct sources of information, professional reviews versus consumer reviews, differentially affect individual's willingness to give. We find that individuals place significantly more value on professional reviews than on equivalent consumer reviews. However, when individuals receive a second piece of information they update their willingness to donate similarly regardless of the source: individuals' willingness to donate is unaffected by ``good news" about the charity, but significantly negatively affected by ``bad" news.
Eliciting Risk and Altruism Preferences: Experimental Evidence (with Romain Gauriot & Robert Slonim)
We apply the basic lessons and insights learned in the elicitation and estimation of risk and time preferences literature to the literature on social preferences. Following Andersen et al. (2008), we design a laboratory experiment to jointly elicit risk preferences and preferences for altruism. Consistent with theory, we find that the standard simplifying assumptions about risk preferences lead to significantly biased estimates of altruism. This is particularly problematic when comparing altruism across relevant sub-groups, such as gender and wealth, leading to possibly erroneous conclusions about which is the more generous sex and the self-regarding rich.
Codes of Conduct at Work
Spending on Image: Substitution and non-Substitution Effects
Parents' Investments in Children and Children's Investment in Themselves (with Robert A. Pollak)
Self-Serving Dishonesty: The Role of Confidence in Driving Dishonesty (with Robert Slonim & Franziska Tausch) [pdf]
Journal of Risk and Uncertainty (2022).
Altruism among Consumers as Donors (with Robert Slonim, Franziska Tausch, and Agnieszka Tymula) [pdf]
Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization (2021), 189, 611-622.
Altruism or Diminishing Marginal Utility? (with Romain Gauriot & Robert Slonim) [pdf]
Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization (2020) ,180, 24–48.
Redesigning the Market for Volunteers: A Donor Registry (with Robert Slonim, Ellen Garbarino, Carmen Wang and Daniel Waller)
[pdf][supplemental material]
Management Science (2020), 66(8), 3528-3541.
We Should Totally Open a Restaurant: How Optimism and Overconfidence Affect Beliefs (with Nicholas W. Papageorge) [pdf] [online appendix]
Journal of Economic Psychology (2018), 67, 177-190.
Waiting To Give: Stated and Revealed Preferences (with Ashley Craig, Ellen Garbarino and Robert Slonim) [pdf] [supplementary material]
Management Science 63.11 (2017): 3672-3690.
Working Papers:
Altruism begets altruism (with Robert Slonim)
Under Review.
CESifo Working Paper 9522 [pdf]
Guided by Bem's (1972) self-perception theory, we design an experiment to ask whether morally-motivated behaviour, e.g., charitable giving, is history-dependent. Using a popular policy nudge, the default option, we exogenously vary altruism "now" and show that the nudge-induced choice to give "now" causes a 41 percentage point (or 200%) increase in the probability of giving "later"; that is, altruism begets altruism. We further show that, consistent with self-perception theory, the choice to behave altruistically "now", rather than the nudge itself, is the crucial element in the causal relationship. These findings are consistent with positive path-dependence, which we interpret as moral consistency.
Increasing Autonomy in Charitable Giving: The Effect of Choosing the Number of Recipients on Donations (with Martina Fehérová, Jana Peliova, Robert Slonim, Maros Servatka)
Revision requested at Economics Letters.
Exploration & Self-Selection: Revisiting Roy (with Barton Hamilton) [pdf]
Evidence from economics, business, psychology and neuroscience demonstrates the fundamental role of the exploration-exploitation trade-off in human behavior, including management, innovation, entrepreneurship, and creativity. Building on Herz et al., (2014), we explore how personality traits and information acquisition interact in an exploration-exploitation game in the laboratory. Roy's (1951) theory of self-selection and comparative advantage provides a road map for our hypotheses and findings. We find that when information type is randomly assigned, there are significant earnings' disparities and interaction effects between personality traits and information type---extraversion and risk tolerance are assets when assigned to one type of information but liabilities when assigned to the other type. However, when individuals select their preferred type of information they recognize their trait-based comparative advantage and choose information optimally, leading, as predicted by theory, to the disappearance of the earnings disparity.
Vice and Virtue Behaviors: Disentangling Substitution and the Direct Effects of the Price of Giving (with Alexander Cornish)
Revision requested at Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization.
CESifo Working Paper 9558 [pdf]
We examine how the U.S. tax policy that encourages charitable giving also affects seemingly unrelated virtue and vice behaviors: exercise and smoking. Using the Panel Study of Income Dynamics, we calculate tax liabilities for 16,712 individuals over 5 waves from which we can construct the price of giving to charity. We estimate the structural model of joint consumption developed by Dinardo & Lemieux (1992, 2001) to disentangle how changes in the price of giving affects exercise and smoking through two distinct channels: (1) an indirect effect through classical substitution effects and (2) a direct effect of the price of giving on the implicit price of exercise and smoking. Contrary to reduced form results which confound these two effects, we find that charitable giving and exercise are substitutes, but that the negative direct effect of the price of giving on exercise dominates. Similarly, charitable giving and smoking are also substitutes, but there is no significant direct effect of the price of giving on smoking behavior. Our results demonstrate the breadth of the effects of tax policy on charitable giving and suggest how policy may be more efficiently designed to increase virtuous behaviors.
In Progress:
Learning to Give: Professional versus Consumer Reviews
We estimate and compare the effect of information from professional versus consumer reviews on consumer behavior. We do so in a pro-social context and examine how information about a charity's effectiveness impacts willingness to donate. We move beyond the existing literature to examine how two distinct sources of information, professional reviews versus consumer reviews, differentially affect individual's willingness to give. We find that individuals place significantly more value on professional reviews than on equivalent consumer reviews. However, when individuals receive a second piece of information they update their willingness to donate similarly regardless of the source: individuals' willingness to donate is unaffected by ``good news" about the charity, but significantly negatively affected by ``bad" news.
Eliciting Risk and Altruism Preferences: Experimental Evidence (with Romain Gauriot & Robert Slonim)
We apply the basic lessons and insights learned in the elicitation and estimation of risk and time preferences literature to the literature on social preferences. Following Andersen et al. (2008), we design a laboratory experiment to jointly elicit risk preferences and preferences for altruism. Consistent with theory, we find that the standard simplifying assumptions about risk preferences lead to significantly biased estimates of altruism. This is particularly problematic when comparing altruism across relevant sub-groups, such as gender and wealth, leading to possibly erroneous conclusions about which is the more generous sex and the self-regarding rich.
Codes of Conduct at Work
Spending on Image: Substitution and non-Substitution Effects
Parents' Investments in Children and Children's Investment in Themselves (with Robert A. Pollak)
