Welcome to my web page. I am a Professor at the University of Toronto, chief scientist at Behavioural Economics in Action @ Rotman, research associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research, and a fellow at CESifo, the U of T Centre for Ethics, the Schwartz Reisman Institute for Technology and Society, the Canadian Centre for Health Economics, the Gender and the Economy Institute at Rotman, and the Bureau of Research on Innovation, Knowledge and Complexity.
My research concerns the ethical constraints and social support to markets, the motivations for altruistic behavior, and various topics in industrial and innovation economics.
Here is my CV
Working papers and current research
Does Scientific Progress Affect Cultural Changes? A Digital Text Analysis (with Michela Giorcelli and Astrid Marinoni), NBER Working Paper No. 25429. Revise and resubmit, Journal of Economic Growth.
Compliance with COVID-19 Social-Distancing Measures in Italy: The role of Expectations and Duration (with Guglielmo Briscese, Mario Macis and Mirco Tonin), NBER Working Paper 26916.
Leaning In or not Leaning Out? Choice Architecture and Women’s Leadership Ascension (with Joyce He and Sonia Kang), NBER Working Paper 26484.
Sticky prices for declining risk? Cancellation premia in the hotel industry (with Claudio Piga and Lorenzo Zirulia), NBER Working Paper 28456.
Constraint or Choice: Relaxing isolation norms and consumers’ intentions (with Guglielmo Briscese, Mario Macis and Mirco Tonin).
What is Repugnant? The Empirics of Morally Contested Transactions (with Julio Elias and Mario Macis).
Enhancing Organ Donor Registration Rates through Strengthening ServiceOntario Customer Representatives’ Motivations: Observational Studies and Field Interventions (with Julian House, Audrey Laporte, Mario Macis, Frank Markel and Nina Mazar).
Altruism, Ethics and Markets: A Behavioral and Neuroscientific Experimental Study (with Mario Macis, Vikram Chib and Jeffrey Kahn).
The Making of Moral Repugnance (with Matt Feinberg and Lisa Kramer).
Published and forthcoming papers (click on titles to open)
Paying for Kidneys? A Randomized Survey and Choice Experiment (with Julio Elías and Mario Macis, American Economic Review, 109, 8, 2855-88, 2019. (Slides) (Suppl. material)
Moral NIMBY-Ism? Understanding societal support for monetary compensation to plasma donors In Canada (with Mario Macis), Law & Contemporary Problems, 81, 83-105, 2018. (Slides) (Suppl. material)
Above a Swamp: A Theory of High-Quality Scientific Production (with Bralind Kiri and Lorenzo Zirulia), Research Policy, 47,5, 827–839, 2018. (Slides)
Motivating Cord Blood Donations with Information and Behavioral Nudges (with Daniela Grieco, Mario Macis and Daniela Di Martino), Nature Scientific Reports, 2018. (Suppl. Material) (Slides)
Understanding Repugnance: Implications for Public Policy (with Julio J. Elias and Mario Macis), World Medical & Health Policy, 9,4, 489-504, 2017.
Economic Development and the Regulation of Morally Contentious Activities (with Julio J. Elias, Mario Macis and Paola Salardi), American Economic Review Papers and Proceedings, 107, 5, 76-80, 2017. (Suppl. material) (Slides)
Incentives and Ethics in the Economics of Body Parts, Osgoode Hall Law Journal, 54, 2 397-417, 2017.
Press coverage: The Economist
Does Information Help or Hinder Job Applicants from Less Developed Countries in Online Markets? (with Ajay Agrawal and Elizabeth Lyons), Journal of International Economics, 103, 1-12, 2016. (Slides)
Bid Takers or Market Makers? The effect of Auctioneers on Auction Outcomes (with Bradley Larsen, Devin Pope and Justin Sydnor), American Economic Journal: Microeconomics, 8,4, 195-229, 2016. (Suppl. material) (Slides)
Viral Altruism? Generosity and Social Contagion in Online Networks (with Mario Macis and Angelo Mele), Sociological Science, 2016. (Slides)
The Incidence and Role of Negative Citations in Science, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America (with Christian Catalini and Alex Oettl), 112, 45, 13823–13826, 2015. (Slides)
Would You Buy a Honda Made in the U.S.? The Effect of Production Location on Manufacturing Quality (with Justin Sydnor), Review of Economics and Statistics, 97, 4, 855-76, 2015. (Suppl. material) (Slides)
Press coverage: The Economist, Business Insider
Markets and Morals: An Experimental Survey Study (with Julio Elias and Mario Macis), PLOS ONE 10, 6, e0127069, 2015.
Sacred Values? The Effect of Information on Attitudes toward Payments for Human Organs (with Julio Elias and Mario Macis), American Economic Review Papers and Proceedings, 105, 5, 361-65, 2015. (Suppl. material) (Slides)
Press coverage: The New York Times, The Atlantic-1, The Atlantic-2, Forbes, Fivethirtyeight, Psychology Today
Rewarding Volunteers: A Field Experiment (with Mario Macis and Robert Slonim), Management Science, 60, 5, 1107–29, 2014. (Slides)
Press Coverage: Marginalrevolution1, Marginalrevolution2, Business Insider, National Affairs, Yahoo!News, Richmond FED, CBC Radio, The Guardian.
Removing Financial Barriers to Organ and Bone Marrow Donation: The Effect of Leave and Tax Legislation in the U.S. (with Mario Macis and Sarah Stith), Journal of Health Economics, 33, 43-56, 2014.
Press coverage: Freakonomics, LifeHealthPro
Time for Blood: The Effect of Paid Leave Legislation on Altruistic Behavior (with Mario Macis), Journal of Law, Economics and Organization, 29, 6,1384-1420, 2013.
Press coverage: Daniel Pink's Drive. This paper also "inspired" one of Gary Becker`s famous Problem Sets
Effects of Social and Economic Incentives and Information on Voluntary Undirected Blood Donations: Evidence from a Field Experiment in Argentina (with Victor Iajya, Mario Macis and Robert Slonim), Social Science and Medicine, 98, 214-223, 2013. (Slides)
Estimating the Effect of Salience in Wholesale and Retail Car Markets (with Meghan Busse, Devin Pope, Jorge Silva-Risso and Justin Sydnor), American Economic Review Papers and Proceedings, 2013. (Slides)
Economic Rewards to Motivate Blood Donations (with Mario Macis and Robert Slonim), Science, 340, 6135, 927-28, 2013.
Heuristic Thinking and Limited Attention in the Car Market (with Devin Pope and Justin Sydnor), American Economic Review, 102, 5, 2206-36, 2012. (Suppl. material)
Press Coverage: NPR, Christian Science Monitor, Cheap Talk blog, NBER Digest, Greg Mankiw's blog, Frankfurter Algemeine, Capital Ideas (UChicago Booth school), Washington Post
Will There Be Blood? Incentives and Displacement Effects in Pro-Social Behavior (with Mario Macis and Robert Slonim), American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, 4, 1, 186-223, 2012.
Press coverage: Financial Times, Financial Times -2, Business Week, Slate.com (The Big Money), IZA (Institute for the Study of Labor), Marginalrevolution1, Marginalrevolution2, Market Design blog, Toronto Sun, U.S. News.
Individual Preferences, Organization, and Competition in a Model of R&D Incentive Provision (with Lorenzo Zirulia), Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization, 84, 2, 550–570, 2012. (Slides)
The Economics of Scientific Misconduct (with Lorenzo Zirulia), Journal of Law, Economics and Organization, 27, 3, 568-603, 2011.
Press coverage: Il Sole 24ore
Incentives and Problem Uncertainty in Innovation Contests: An Empirical Analysis (with Kevin Boudreau and Karim Lakhani), Management Science, 57, 5, 843–863, 2011.
Social Image Concerns and Prosocial Behavior: Field Evidence from a Nonlinear Incentive Scheme (with Mario Macis), Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization, 76, 225-237, 2010. (Suppl. material)
Do All Material Incentives for Prosocial Activities Backfire? The Response to Cash and Non-Cash Incentives for Blood Donations (with Mario Macis), Journal of Economic Psychology, 31, 4, 738–748, 2010. (Suppl. Material)
Inside or Outside the IP System? Business Creation in Academia (with Riccardo Fini and Scott Shane), Research Policy, 39, 8, 1060-1069, 2010.
Press coverage: New York Times, Nature News
Different Missions and Commitment Power in R&D Organization: Theory and Evidence on Industry-University Relations, Organization Science, 20, 3, 565-582, 2009. (Suppl. material)
Academic Entrepreneurship, Managerial and Decision Economics, 30, 7, 443-464, 2009.
Sample Size and Precision in NIH Peer Review (with David Kaplan and Celia Kaplan), PLOS ONE, July 23 2008.
Other publications
Business Apologies and the Ethics and Narrative of Trust, C4E Journal -- Perspectives on Ethics.
Incentives for Prosocial and Intrinsically Motivated Activities, IZA World of Labor.
Paid vs Volunteer Donations: An Analysis of the Behavioral and Ethical Issues around Donor Incentives (with Mario Macis), in: Domen R., ed., Ethical Issues in Transfusion Medicine and Cellular Therapies, Bethesda, MD: AABB Press, 2015.
To the Editor: On the Importance of Unconditional Rewards for Blood Donations (with Mario Macis and Robert Slonim), Clinical Chemistry, 2014.
Letter to the Editor: A Critical Comment on Niza, Tung and Marteau's Incentivizing Blood Donation: Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis to Test Titmuss' Hypotheses (with Mario Macis and Robert Slonim), Health Psychology, 2013.
In Defense of WHO's Blood Donation Policy: Response (with Mario Macis and Robert Slonim), Science, 342, 6159, 692, 2013.
The Value of Incentives in Blood Donations: response (with Mario Macis and Robert Slonim), Science (letter response), 341, 6142, 129, 2013.
Academic Entrepreneurship (with Riccardo Fini and Scott Shane), In Palgrave MacMillan Encyclopedia of Strategic Management, 2013.
Digitization of Information and the Market for Contract Labor (with Ajay Agrawal, John Horton and Liz Lyons). Forthcoming in Goldfarb, A., Greenstein, S. & Tucker, C (Eds) Economics of Digitization: An Agenda. National Bureau of Economic Research.
Press coverage: The New York Times
Different Yokes for Different Folks: Individual Preferences, Institutional Logics, and the Commercialization of Academic Research (with Riccardo Fini), Advances in the Study of Entrepreneurship, Innovation and Economic Growth, Vol 21: Spanning Boundaries and Disciplines: University Technology Commercialization in the Idea Age (eds. Gary Libecap and Marie Thursby), 1-25, 2010.
Note: All published articles are the sole copyright of the respective publishers. Materials are provided for educational use only. Downloading of materials constitutes an agreement that the materials are for personal use only. The links to supplementary materials, where available, direct to Appendices and, in some cases, to data and codes. Some of the data used in the studies reported above are part of proprietary or confidential datasets. Researchers interested in these data can contact me to make arrangements on how to access and use the data.