Publications

Slacktivism, Journal of Theoretical Politics, March 2023, 35(2): 126–143 (latest draft here).

Counting on My Vote Not Counting: Expressive Voting in Committees (with José-Alberto Guerra and Warn Nuarpear Lekfuangfu), Journal of Public Economics, January 2022, 205: 104555 (latest draft here).

Social Connectivity, Media Bias, and Correlation Neglect (with Philipp Denter and Martin Dumav), Economic Journal, July 2021, 637: 2033-2057 (latest draft here).

Optimal Price of Entry into a Competition, Economic Inquiry, January 2021, 59(1): 280-286 (latest draft here).

Optimal Information Censorship, Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization, July 2019, 163: 377-385 (latest draft here).

When Collective Ignorance Is Bliss: Theory and Experiment on Voting for Learning, with José-Alberto Guerra, Journal of Public Economics, January 2019, 169: 52-64 (latest draft here).

Sincere Voting in an Electorate with Heterogeneous Preferences, Economics Letters, May 2017, 154: 120-123 (latest draft here).

Working Papers

Guns, pets, and strikes: an experiment on political action and social interactions (with José-Alberto Guerra), April 2024.

We study the role of political collective action in inducing group favouritism and shaping subsequent social interactions. In an experiment, subjects choose whether to participate in real-world collective action. Before and after, subjects are put in pairs to interact in games that measure prosocial preferences. Following participation choices, we observe in-group favouritism between participants, but not within other pairs. This holds for both high-cost and low-cost forms of collective action, and for left-wing, right-ring, and nonpolitical causes. Our structural estimation recovers individual prosocial preferences, showing that they become more intense as a result of joint participation. We then show that participating individuals receive private payoffs in subsequent interactions with fellow participants. Because of this, expecting higher participation by peers makes an individual more likely to participate. This mechanism suggests a reason why individuals participate despite being unlikely to affect the outcome, and helps explain the role of coordination and signalling.

Troll Farms and Voter Disinformation (with Philipp Denter), November 2023.

Political agents often attempt to influence elections through troll farms – organisations that flood social media platforms with messages emulating genuine information. We model the behaviour of a troll farm that faces a heterogeneous electorate of partially informed voters, and aims to achieve a desired political outcome by targeting each type of voter with a specific distribution of messages. We show that such tactics are more effective when voters are otherwise well-informed. Consequently, societies with high-quality media are more vulnerable to electoral manipulation, and counteracting troll farms may require promotion of informative but non-expert opinions. At the same time, increased polarisation, as well as deviations from Bayesian rationality, can reduce the negative effect of troll farms and restore efficiency of electoral outcomes.

Critical Mass in Collective Action (with José-Alberto Guerra and Warn Nuarpear Lekfuangfu), April 2023, revise and resubmit, Journal of the Economic Science Association.

Using a laboratory experiment, we study the incentives of individuals to contribute to a public good that is provided if and only if the fraction of contributors reaches a certain threshold. We jointly vary the size of the group, the cost of contributing, the required threshold, and the framing of contributions (giving to the common pool, or not taking from the common pool). We find that a higher threshold makes individuals more likely to contribute. The effect is strong enough that in a small group, making the required threshold higher increases the probability that the public good is provided. In larger groups, however, the effect disappears. At the same time, we do not find a consistent effect of framing on the probability of contributing or on the likelihood of success. 

Voting behind the Veil of Ignorance: Collective Learning and Distributive Uncertainty, August 2023.

A committee consisting of two factions is considering a project whose distributive consequences are unknown. Support of both factions is required for the project to be approved. By delaying approval, the committee can gradually learn which faction benefits from the project. I show that in many situations, a project is more likely to be eventually approved if it gives a lower payoff to everyone. The probability of approval and the expected payoffs of both factions are higher if the project is ex ante less likely to benefit the faction that tends to receive good news faster. Equilibrium amount of learning is excessive, and a deadline on adopting the project is often optimal.

A Simple Model of Competitive Testing, May 2023, revise and resubmit, Economic Inquiry.

A number of candidates are competing for a prize. Each candidate is privately informed about his type. The decision-maker who allocates the prize wants to give it to the candidate with the highest type. Each candidate can take a test that reveals his type at a cost. I show that an increase in competition increases information revelation when the cost is high, and reduces it when the cost is low. Nevertheless, the decision-maker always benefits from greater competition. Candidates can be better off if the cost is higher. Making the test mandatory for receiving the prize is Pareto-dominated by voluntary disclosure unless competition is low.

Selected Work in Progress

Herding in Collective Action (with José-Alberto Guerra).

Clickbait in Online News Markets (with Philipp Denter)

Social Learning with Correlation Neglect (with Philipp Denter and Martin Dumav)