Working papers

Correcting Consumer Misperceptions about CO2 Emissions   (with Taisuke Imai, Peter Schwardmann, and Joël van der Weele)

Coverage: Pour L'Eco, Rostra Economica, BSE Insights, Researching Misunderstandings

Policy makers frequently champion information provisions about carbon impact on the premise that consumers are willing to mitigate their emissions but are poorly informed about how to do so. We empirically test this argument and reject it. We collect an extensive new dataset and find both large misperceptions of the carbon impact of different consumption behaviors and clear preferences for mitigation. Yet, in two separate experiments, we show that correcting beliefs has no effect on consumption in large representative samples. Our null results are well-powered and informative, as we target information for maximal impact. They call into question the potential of information policies to fight climate change.

Memory Sophistication (With Taisuke Imai)

Human memory is less than perfect, leading to mistakes in judgments and decisions. This project experimentally investigates a) whether people are sophisticated about their memory limitations, and b) whether the complexity of the memory task affects sophistication. It finds that people can be both under and overconfident about their memory and the complexity of the memory task increases the size of the mistakes. Interference makes people overconfident, instead a high amount of information to remember makes them underconfident. Confidence goes up with time mitigating underconfidence but exacerbating overconfidence. These findings show that memory sophistication is a complicated phenomenon, they indicate when memory limitations generate expensive mistakes, and they suggest how to minimize the cost of memory mistakes in the workplace.

Work in progress

Limited attention and the understanding of economic policies (With Klaus Schmidt)

The economic consequences of memory limitations (With Taisuke Imai)