Welcome!

My name is Elaheh Fatemipour. I am a PhD candidate in Economics at the University of Warwick, United Kingdom. I am on the 2026/2027 job market.

I am an applied microeconomist working at the intersection of political economy, behavioural and experimental economics, and development economics.

I examine how individual beliefs, social preferences, and political institutions shape economic and political outcomes.

Methodologically, I use experiments, quasi-experimental methods, and computational methods, including machine learning and text analysis.

Contact: elaheh.fatemipour@warwick.ac.uk.
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Supervisors: Daniel Sgroi, Nathan Canen, Devesh Rustagi.
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Job Market Paper

The Economic–Cultural Trade-Off in Attitudes toward Immigrants (Job Market Paper) (with Priyama Majumdar) [pdf]

Many countries use economic criteria in immigration policies, yet public attitudes also respond to cultural concerns. Can higher economic contributions compensate for cultural distance in public attitudes toward immigrants? To answer this question, we conduct an online experiment in the UK using a multiple price list design. Respondents require an immigrant from a culturally distant country to earn, on average, 57% more than an immigrant from a culturally close country before supporting their application for permanent residence. This number is reduced to 16% when participants learn that the distant-origin immigrant personally holds UK-typical views. Therefore, much of the initial disadvantage reflects assumptions about immigrants’ personal views inferred from their cultural origin. Incentivised tasks involving actual immigrants show similar patterns. Exploring mechanisms, we find that disclosing UK-typical views reduces cultural concerns, whereas higher income does not systematically change beliefs about an immigrant’s personal views. Our findings suggest that higher earnings can offset the disadvantage associated with cultural distance at sufficiently high levels. Communicating information on shared values directly addresses cultural concerns that are difficult to alleviate through economic criteria alone.

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