Research

Publications and Working Papers

Competition for Context-Sensitive Consumers (with Lydia Mechtenberg)
Management Science (2021), 67(5): 2828-2844

When preferences are sensitive to context, firms may influence purchase decisions by designing the environment of consumption choices. This paper studies how competitive retailers optimally design their product line if preferences at the store depend on whether the choice set draws consumer attention to the quality or price of a product.

link to journal site; pdf (accepted version); pdf (previous version with additional analyses on partial naïveté)

Corrupted Votes and Rule Compliance (with Jana Freundt)
American Economic Journal: Microeconomics (2024), 16(4): 440-474

Allegations of voter fraud accompany many real-world elections. How does electoral malpractice affect the acceptance of elected institutions? Using an online experiment in which people distribute income according to majority-elected rules, we show that those who experience vote buying or voter disenfranchisement during the election are subsequently less likely to comply with a rule.

link to journal site; pdf (accepted version), older working paper version: ECONtribute Discussion Paper No. 137 (2022: pdf) 

Social Norms and Elections: How elected rules can make behavior (in)appropriate (with Jana Freundt and Christoph Oslislo)
Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization (2022), 196: 148-177

Can elections change people’s ideas about what is ethically right and what is wrong? A number of recent observations suggest that social norms can change rapidly as a result of election outcomes. We explore this conjecture using a controlled online experiment.

link to journal site (open access), older working paper version: ECONtribute Discussion Paper No. 068 (2021: pdf) 

Spontaneous Discrimination with Endogenous Information Disclosure (single-authored)
revise & resubmit, Journal of Economic Theory, current version: 2023 (pdf)

Under what circumstances do tolerant individuals—those who inherently dislike to discriminate—participate in the dissemination of information that keeps discrimination alive? This paper explores the idea that discrimination can emerge as a social norm in tolerant societies—and studies the incentives of individuals to disclose information about whether they and others comply.

Group Image Concerns (with Gönül Dogan and Fabian Hoffmann)
current version (Aug 2024) available here, ECONtribute Discussion paper here, slides available here

We initiate the causal study of "group image concerns". Using a series of laboratory and online experiments across various group identities and choice domains, we show that individuals value not just how others perceive them personally but also how others perceive their group as a whole. This leads them to engage in costly signaling behavior, acting in ways that reflect desirable group qualities when their individual identity is hidden but their group's image is at stake, and to express both "group pride" and "group shame" by paying to reveal behavior of other group members only when that behavior reflects well on the group.

"Figleafing" and Self-Serving Behavior (with Bernd Irlenbusch, Jan-Erik Lönnqvist and Gari Walkowitz)
current version: 2022 (new version and additional data collection in progress, old draft available on request)

Decisions perceived as self-serving often involve claims that responsibility lies with an unbiased entity—like an advisor, court, or election outcome—to whom authority was delegated.  In many cases, these claims are non-verifiable, arousing suspicion that they are nothing more than a "fig leaf" for selfish behaviors. We address this suspicion using a series of experiments, showing that "figleafing" is common and that the option to do so strongly discourages prosocial behavior.

Cooperative Decisions when Consequences are Delayed (with Arne Pieters)
current version: 2023 (draft available on request)

Social dilemma decisions often involve delayed consequences, with both private and social costs and benefits occurring with a significant time lag after decisions are made. Recent research suggests that this delay in consequences can influence people's choices, resulting in time-inconsistent prosocial behavior. We provide experimental evidence from a public goods game, showing that the sign and size of delay effects on prosocial behavior depend on whether externalities on others are framed as positive or negative.

Selected Work in Progress

Shocking Belief Systems (with Eugenio Verrina)

Ambiguity, Stereotypes, and Discrimination (with Lennart Struth and Max Thon) 

Team Work, Narratives, and Gender (with Lydia Mechtenberg)