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I am a Lecturer (Assistant Professor with tenure) at the Department of Economics, University of Essex, UK. I obtained my Ph.D. in Economics at HEC, University of Lausanne, Switzerland.  

Click here for my CV.

Research Fields: 

My research explores how people make decisions in organisations and digital spaces. It examines how organisational design, incentives, and social interactions shape behaviour and performance.

Publications

"Understanding Mechanisms of Persistence in Prosocial Behavior" with Adrian Bruhin, Lorenz Goette, Simon Haenni, and Blood Transfusion Service of Red Cross (JPE: Micro, 2026)

"Improving Support for University Students with Type 1 Diabetes"  with Stoet, G., Foster, E., Kerr, C., Thornhill, M-A., Cyranka, K., Matejko, B., Sarna-Palacz, D., Płonka-Stępień, M. and Klupa, T. (The Lancet Diabetes & Endocrinology, 2024)

"Information Exchange and Multiple Peer Groups:   A Natural Experiment  in an Online Community"  with Zhen Zhu. (Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, 2022)

"Maternal Mental Health and  Social Support from Online Communities During Pregnancy" with Zhen Zhu. (Health and Social Care in the Community, 2022)

“Spillovers of Prosocial Motivation: Evidence from an Intervention Study on Blood Donors” with Adrian Bruhin, Lorenz Goette, and Simon Haenni. (Journal of Health Economics, 2020)

“Splash with A Teammate: Peer Effects in High-StakesTournaments” (Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, 2020)

“The Sting of Rejection:  Deferring Blood Donors due to Low Hemoglobin Values Reduces Future Returns” with seven coauthors (Transfusion Medicine and Hemotherapy, 2020)

Working Papers

"Motivation Complementarities in Prosocial Behavior: Evidence from Social Networks of Blood Donors" with Adrian Bruhin, Lorenz Goette, and Simon Haenni (Revise & Resubmit at Games and Economic Behavior) 

Abstract: If individuals' prosocial motivations are complements, this creates an important lever in the provision of social capital. We investigate the extent of such motivational complementarities in the context of voluntary blood donations -- a key example of a purely prosocial behavior. We use a quasi-random phone call to identify causal effects. A 10-percentage point increase in the donation rate in a blood drive raises the focal donor's donation rate by about 5.6 percentage points, which creates a policy multiplier of 2.3. We also  find suggestive evidence that the motivation complementarities do not merely reflect the benefits of sharing traveling costs. They result, at least partly, from more general mechanisms, such as social approval, peer pressure, and image concerns.

Work in Progress

"Understanding the Educational Ecosystem Through Parents' Digital Footprints Over Children's Developmental Milestones" with Zhen Zhu

Abstract: Parents rarely talke about schooling in isolation. Using more than a decade of discussions from one of the world's largest online parenting communities, we examine the educational ecosystem through parents' digital footprints across children's developmental milestones. We show that the concerns accompanying education evolve systematically over the child life course. Health and wellbeing dominate education discussions in early childhood, academic performance becomes increasingly central during school years, parental conflict rises with age, and financial concerns become most salient in adulthood. Our findings demonstrate that education is embedded within a changing ecosystem of family concerns, offering new insights for education and family policy.

"Managerial Task Allocation in Team Work with mixed Genders" with Laura Mangold and Friederike Mengel

"Culture, Coordination, and Team Performance: Evidence from Professional Tennis Doubles" with Alessandro Di Mattia

"Fair Play or Winning Ugly? Risk Taking Behavior in Elite Competition under Different Rules" with Alessandro Di Mattia, Pierre Regibeau, Katherine Rockett, and Elke Weidenholzer