Research
Publications
Publications
Risk Preferences and Incentives for Acquisition and Disclosure (with Erik Lillethun), The Journal of Law, Economics, and Organization, 2020, 36(2): 314-342 Online Appendix
Civil disputes feature parties with biased incentives acquiring evidence with costly effort. Evidence may then be revealed at trial or concealed to persuade a judge or jury. Using a persuasion game, we examine how a litigant’s risk preferences influence evidence acquisition incentives. We find that high risk aversion depresses equilibrium evidence acquisition. We then study the problem of designing legal rules to balance good decision making against the costs of acquisition. We characterize the optimal design, which differs from equilibrium decision rules. Notably, for very risk-averse litigants, the design is “overincentivized” with stronger rewards and punishments than in equilibrium. We find similar results for various common legal rules, including admissibility of evidence, maximum penalties, and minimum penalties. These results have implications for how rules could differentiate between high risk aversion types (e.g., individuals) and low risk aversion types (e.g., corporations) to improve evidence acquisition efficiency.Working Papers
Working Papers
Endogenous Identity Formation and Gender Differences
Gender differences in economic decisions are well-documented and span a variety of important choices. Laboratory experiments have been used to identify potential mechanisms to explain these differences, and the results have most frequently been attributed to men and women having different preferences, especially when subjects' choices are anonymous. In this paper, I propose a theoretical model that highlights that persistent gender differences can arise without differences in preferences. I show that if two groups are identical ex ante but there exists a stereotype about one of the groups, then groups will behave in ways consistent with this stereotype in equilibrium. Extending this to a multi-period model, I show that if individuals endogenously form group identities through habit formation, these differences will persist in the long-run, even after choices are no longer observed. The model thus depicts a mechanism through which external constraints are eventually internalized and captures how social norms can become self-enforced by individuals. Using multiple existing experimental datasets where gender data were collected but never analyzed, I find evidence consistent with my model's predictions. I then conduct a new experiment to directly test the proposed mechanism. I show that by exposing subjects to external constraints in initial decisions, I mitigate gender differences in altruism. Moreover, this remains true even when those external constraints are removed. However, when subjects are not initially exposed to these constraints, women are significantly more generous than men. [Portions of this paper were previously circulated under the title "Identity Formation, Gender Differences, and the Perpetuation of Stereotypes"](Hidden) Gender Differences (new draft coming soon!)
Examining gender differences in decision-making is a large and growing area of experimental research. Experiments have been used to document differences in a variety of important areas, including risk-taking, altruism, reciprocity, competitiveness, and negotiation. The size and scope of these differences suggest that there may be heterogenous treatment effects for men and women in other experiments, even when researchers are not looking for them. In this paper, I reanalyze multiple datasets from previously published papers on dictator and ultimatum games where gender data were collected but not analyzed by the authors, and I find significant gender differences in all of them. Moreover, I find that the results of the original papers were statistically significant because either only men or only women were responsive to the experimental treatment and the effect was strong enough to make the pooled result significant. My results suggest that gender differences in experiments are more prevalent than we currently realize and that heterogenous treatment effects should be examined even when they are not the focus of the study. In repeated interactions, players frequently want to condition their behavior on past events. This requires them to recall the game's history. However, players may not be able to accurately remember the history, because their memory may be finite or biased. Although there is a growing theoretical literature that allows for memory imperfections, there is currently a lack of empirical or experimental work that examines individuals' memory in these environments. Using an experiment on the Finitely Repeated Prisoner's Dilemma, I examine individuals' recall of a repeated game. I first establish evidence on general trends for recall inaccuracy in a repeated game environment. I find evidence that memory has a limited capacity and is biased, with both timing of information and specific outcomes being associated with recall accuracy. I then develop a method to estimate individual subjects' strategies from their observed behavior to analyze how memory is associated with behavioral outcomes (strategy and strategy implementation). I find that subjects frequently remember using a different estimated strategy than they actually did, and they recall making fewer implementation errors for their recalled strategy. I also find that the number of strategy implementation errors is negatively correlated with subjects' recall accuracy of the history.Research in Progress
Research in Progress
Learning about Commitment, with Shanthi Manian
Memory and Investment in Productive Technologies, with Haseeb Ahmed and Shanthi Manian
Gender Differences in Likability and Team Synergy, with Rania Gihleb and Rachel Landsman
Memory Management