Research

 Work in progress

Falling and failing (to learn): Evidence from a Nation-Wide Cybersecurity Field Experiment with SMEs.  with Aurelien Baillon, Francesco Capozza, Thomas Dirkmaat, Amber Druten  & Evelien van der veer  (R&R JEBO)

Prior experiences are crucial in shaping risk prevention behavior. Previous studies have shown that experiencing a (simulated) phishing attack reduces the likelihood of clicking on unsafe links and disclosing one's password. In a large field experiment involving 670 small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) and their 33,000 employees, we examined the impact of experience on individuals' ability to detect cyber-security threats, and how long-lasting this effect was over several months. We collected data at both the company and individual levels, including risk, time preference, and trust. Our findings indicate only a short-term effect of previous phishing emails on clicking behavior. Individuals with greater patience were the most likely to benefit from phishing drills.

A simple betting rule to incentivize the elicitation of continuous distributions. With Aurelien Baillon.

We introduce an incentive mechanism, call a betting rule, to elicit continuous distribution. We show it is behaviorally proper, in the sense that it provides incentives to report accurate beliefs even for non-expected utility maximizers and it is transparent and easy to understand.

Unable to learn? Stereotypes, ambiguity attitudes, and information seeking. with Cedric Gutierrez, Marine Hainguerlot and Chen Li.

We investigated whether people's ambiguity attitudes and beliefs about others' competence depend on the stereotypicality of others' profiles. We found that people are more ambiguity averse about men's performance in a task that they are expected to perform well when they have a counter-stereotypical background. Also, people hold more pessimistic beliefs about them, and the effect of these pessimistic beliefs are comparatively enlarged by judges being less a-insensitive towards them. In this sense, counter-stereotypical men were punished both in terms of ambiguity attitudes and beliefs about their competence. Learning of new information diminished the penalty for men in terms of ambiguity attitudes, but more pessimistic beliefs about them persisted.