Welcome

I am a Professor of Economics at the University of Essex and a Rotating Chair in Behavioural Economics at Erasmus University Rotterdam as well as  a Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences (UK).  My research area is Behavioural Economics. Much of my research is on (Evolutionary) Game Theory and Learning with a big focus on the study of social networks. I have studied opinion dynamics, the emergence of social norms as well as social influence and diffusion of innovation in networks. I also work on social identity, bounded rationality and discrimination and how they are linked and have recently started working on behavioural climate economics and the impact of working from home (WFH) on networks, productivity and innovation. On the left panel you will find links to themed pages some of which subsume project pages for recent research grants.

I teach (or have been teaching) courses on Microeconomic Theory, Game Theory, Mathematics and Behavioural Economics. More information about teaching can be found on the webpage of the Department of Economics. Some years ago we created an MSc in Behavioural Economics at Essex. Information can be found here. My google scholar page can be found here.

Current Working Papers/ Work in Progress

• Uncertainty Attitudes, Subjective Expectations and Decisions under Uncertainty, joint with A. Delavande and J. Ganguli {r+r Management Science}
• Personal Relative Position and Belief in Meritocracy, joint with A. Albertazzi and P. Lown.

• Diversity in Committees, joint with N. Hughes and Z. UH Khan.
• Influence in Social Networks, joint with D. Friedman and J. Kovarik
• Innovator Networks within the Firm and the Quality of Innovation, joint with M. Gibbs and C. Siemroth.

• Demand for Green Skills in an Evolving Landscape, joint with E. Arenas-Arroyo, J. Fabian, B. Schmidpeter and M. Serafinelli
• The impact of social identity for social learning and the dynamics of opinions, joint with V. Grimm and X. Zhou
• Collective Action under Escalating Dynamic Risk,  joint with D. R. Kurian and D. van Dolder

Most requested/cited publications 

For a complete chronological list please see the CV. More publications for different themes together with abstracts can be found on the topics pages on the left.

• Social Influence and Carbon Dioxide Mitigation, joint with J. Ganguli, Journal of Public Economics 253 (2026), 105558.

• Non-Bayesian Statistical Discrimination, joint with P. Campos-Mercade, Management Science 70(4) (2024), 2549-2567. [Replication Data]
• Work from Home & Productivity: Evidence from Personnel and Analytics Data on IT Professionals, (joint with M. Gibbs and C. Siemroth), Journal of Political Economy: Microeconomics 1 (1), (2023), 7-14.

• Match Length Realization and Cooperation in Indefinitely Repeated Games, joint with L. Orlandi and S. Weidenholzer, Journal of Economic Theory 200 (2022), 105416.
• Compliance Behavior in Networks: Evidence from a Field Experiment (joint with F. Drago and C. Traxler),  American Economic Journal: Applied Economics 12(2), (2020), 1-40.
• Experiments on Belief Formation in Networks (joint with V. Grimm), Journal of the European Economic Association 18(1), (2020), 49-82.
• Gender Differences in Networking, Economic Journal, 130 (630) (2020), 1842-1873. [Replication Data]
• Gender Bias in Teaching Evaluations, joint with J. Sauermann and U. Zoelitz, Journal of the European Economic Association 17(2) (2019), 535-566. [Online Appendix] 

• Learning in Network Games (joint with J. Kovarik and J.G. Romero), Quantitative Economics 9(1) (2018), 85-139. [Online Appendix] [Data] [Best Paper Award]
• Risk and Temptation: A Meta-Study on Social Dilemma Games, Economic Journal 128 (2018), 3182-3209. [Online Appendix] [Replication Data]
• Growth and Inequality in Public Good Provision, joint with S. Gaechter, E. Tsakas and A. Vostroknutov, Journal of Public Economics 150 (2017), 1-13. [Online Appendix] [Replication Data]
• Natural Disasters and Social Cohesion, joint with A. Calo-Blanco, J. Kovarik and J.G. Romero, Plos ONE 12(6) (2017), e0176885.

• An Experiment on Learning in a Multiple Games Environment,(joint with V. Grimm), Journal of Economic Theory 147(6), (2012), 2220-2259. [Replication Data]
• Learning Across Games, Games and Economic Behavior, 74(2), (2012), 601-619.

Surveys

•  Social Influence in Networks: Past, present and future research, prepared for WEHIA special issue JEIC (2026)

• Gender Differences in Networking - A Survey, prepared for EE Handbook on Experimental Economics of Gender (2024). 

• Experimental Research on Discrimination, prepared for EE Encyclopedia of Experimental Social Science (2024).
• Learning in Social Networks , Chapter 82 in Elgar Encyclopedia of Behavioural and Experimental Economics, ed S-H Chuah, R. Hoffmann and A. Neelim, Cheltenham, UK: Edward Elgar Publishing, February 2025.

Teaching

I teach (or have been teaching) courses on Microeconomic Theory, Game Theory, Evolutionary Game Theory and Mathematics, Behavioural Economics, Cognitive Psychology and Economics as well as a summer module on Experimental Economics. More information about teaching can be found on the webpage of the Department of Economics.  

Links and More