Current Research

Working papers

"A Model of Social Duties" (with Ellingsen, T.)  Revise & Resubmit at Journal of Political Economy

Idea: We present a model of of duty-based motivation, distinguishing between duties of justice (proscriptions) and duties of charity (prescriptions).  Duties of justice relate to entitlements, which can be identified from appropriateness ratings. The theory explains various experimental findings that other models struggle to explain.
Elication Experiment Instructions
This work largely replaces our previous working paper “Decency”

Categorization in Games: A Bias-Variance Perspective (with Jehiel, P.)  Submitted

Idea: We present a framework for endogenous categorisation in games. On-path situations (nodes, information sets, or types) are distinguished perfectly, due to abundance of data, whereas off-path situations have to be categorised coarsely due to scarcity of data, bundling similar situations together.  Application of the framework to classic examples yield novel predictions.
This work incorporates our previous working paper “Cycling and Categorical Learning in Decentralized Adverse Selection Economies” 

Ambiguity Aversion and Value Uncertainty Generates an Endowment Effect (with Gärdenfors, P.)  Submitted

Idea: Buyers tend to be more uncertain than sellers regarding the value of a good. Some of this uncertainty takes the form of ambiguity rather than plain risk. It follows that ambiguity aversion creates a wedge between WTA and WTP.

Work in progress

"Preferences as Heuristics" (with A. Rigos)

“An Experiment on Observations on Cooperation” (with Heller, Y., and Embrey, M.)

Retired working paper

“Asymptotically Optimal Regression Trees”   

Idea: Optimal locally adaptive bin-size is derived for a version of regression trees. Consistency and asymptotic normality of the estimator is proved.