Research
Motivated Beliefs (and Preferences)
"Managing Screen Time: Feedback and (Soft-)Commitment" (with Zhongwen Chen, Erte Xiao and Jane Zhang)
"Shame, Guilt, and Motivated Self-Confidence" (with Roberta Dessi and Junjie Ren), Reject and Resubmit, Journal of European Economic Association.
"Does a Sea Fishing Legacy Explain Differences in Risk Attitudes?" (with Xiqian Cai, Lata Gangadharan and Yi Lu).
"Motivated Beliefs, Independence and Cooperation" (with Wei Huang and Yu Wang), European Economic Review, 2024.
"Overachieving and Obsessive Behavior as Signaling Devices under Career Concern" (with Alexander Rodivilov and Dongsoo Shin), Journal of Institutional and Theoretical Economics, 2022.
"Motivated False Memory" (with Soo Hong Chew and Wei Huang), Journal of Political Economy, 2020.
Coverage in: Sohu News, Caixin.com, TalkEcon, The Paper, Sargasso, Sciencepalooza, Economie, ... ...
"Sunk Cost as a Self-Management Device" (with Fuhai Hong and Wei Huang), Management Science, 2019.
Press Release: Sunk Cost and Self-Management
Coverage in: Phys.org, QRIUS, ForeignAffairs, The Conversation, ... ...
"Overconfidence, Stability and Investments" (with Roberta Dessi), Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, 2018.
Coverage in: Urbanomics, Stumbling and Mumbling, TalkEcon, ... ...
"Information Manipulation and Climate Agreements" (with Fuhai Hong), American Journal of Agricultural Economics, 2014.
Press Release: Media Bias and the Climate Issue, OUPblog
Coverage in: ClimateWire, Breibart
Economics of Language
"Language Shift and Trade in Artificial Codes" (with Yiting Guo, Fuhai Hong, Mike Wu and Yang Yang).
"The Emergence of Language Differences in Artificial Codes" (with Fuhai Hong), Experimental Economics, 2017. Supplementary Material, Erratum
"The Emergence of Compositional Grammars in Artificial Codes" (with Fuhai Hong and Wooyoung Lim), Games and Economic Behavior, 2017. Supplementary Material
Coverage in: TalkEcon
"Economics of Contract Interpretation", Research in Law and Economics, Zerbe, R.O and J.B. Kirkwood (ed.), 2012.
Experiments and Methodology
"Fear on the Plank? Virtual but more Real!" (with Zhongwen Chen, Wei Huang, Paul McIntosh and Irwyn Shepherd).
"Status and Hierarchy: Field Evidence from Vervet Monkeys and Human Children" (with Xiu Chen, Roberta Dessi, Wei Huang, Riccardo Pansini and Sharon Zuo), Building on an earlier work with only monkey subjects under Reject and Resubmit at Economic Journal.
"How time flies: Time Perception and Intertemporal Choice" (with Xiu Chen), Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics, 2024.
"Concentration and Variability of Forecasts in Artificial Investment Games: An Online Experiment on WeChat" (with Xiu Chen and Fuhai Hong), Experimental Economics, 2020.
Scanning Approach in Contract Theory
"Supply Chain Frictions" (with Ying-Ju Chen, Zhengqing Gui and Ernst-Ludwig von Thadden).
"Incentive-Compatibility, Limited Liability and Costly Liquidation in Financial Contracting" (with Zhengqing Gui and Ernst-Ludwig von Thadden), Games and Economic Behavior, 2019.
Contracts and Awareness
"Financial Fraud and Investor Awareness" (with Zhengqing Gui and Sunny Huang), Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, 2024.
"Strategic Information Suppression in Borrowing and Pre-Lending Cognition: Theory and Evidence" (with Zhongwen Chen), Games (Special Issue on Economics of Motivated Beliefs), 2023.
Editor’s Choice Articles in 2023
"Delegation and Information Disclosure with Unforeseen Contingencies" (with Haoran Lei), B.E. Journal of Theoretical Economics (Special Issue on Unawareness), 2021.
"Whom to Educate? Financial Literacy and Investor Awareness" (with Zhengqing Gui and Sunny Huang), China Economic Review, 2021.
"Information Disclosure and Consumer Awareness" (with Sanxi Li and Martin Peitz), Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, 2016.
"Vertically Differentiated Duopoly with Unaware Consumers" (with Sanxi Li and Martin Peitz), Mathematical Social Sciences (Special Issue on Unawareness), 2014.
"Multi-Task Agency with Unawareness" (with Ernst-Ludwig von Thadden), Theory and Decision, 2014.
"Solution Concepts of Principal-Agent Models with Unawareness of Actions" (with Ying-Ju Chen), Games (Special Issue on Contract Theory), 2013.
"Incentives for Unaware Agents" (with Ernst-Ludwig von Thadden), Review of Economic Studies, 2012.
Coverage in: A Fine Theorem
"Framing Contingencies in Contracts", Mathematical Social Sciences, 2011.
"Contractual Traps" (with Ying-Ju Chen), Proceedings of the 12th conference on Theoretical Aspects of Rationality and Knowledge (TARK 2009), Heifetz, A. (ed.), 2009.
"Moral Hazard with Unawareness", Rationality and Society, 2008.
Coverage in: LessWrong