Research

Publications

"Coordinated selection of collective action:  Wealthy interest bias and Inequality" with Christopher Cotton, Luca Corazzini, and Tommaso Reggiani. Journal of Public Economics (forthcoming) [DOWNLOAD]  

We extend a collective action problem to study policy and project selection by heterogeneous groups who prefer to work together on a joint initiative but may disagree on which initiative is best. Our framework, adapted from a model of multiple threshold public goods, presents groups with several mutually exclusive projects, any of which require sufficient support from the group to succeed. Individuals strictly prefer to contribute where and how much they believe others expect of them to ensure joint project success. Groups tend to coordinate on the public good preferred by the wealthiest member, demonstrating a wealthy-interest bias even without corruption, politics, and information asymmetries. At the same time, groups divide costs in highly progressive ways, with the wealthy voluntarily funding a disproportionate share, helping offset the inherent inequality from endowment and selection differences. We discuss applications for policy selection, charitable giving, and taxes.

"A micro-macro approach for the evaluation of fiscal policies: The case of the Italian tax-benefit reform" with Francesco Figari, Eva Alexandri and Cornelia-Madalina Suta.  Economic Modelling [DOWNLOAD]

A comprehensive evaluation of fiscal policy reforms requires a methodology that simultaneously considers their aggregate impact on the economy as a whole as well as their distributional implications at the individual or household level. In this paper, we provide a new link between a fiscal microsimulation model and a macro-econometric model and we analyze the impact of the reform of the Italian tax-benefit system occurred in 2022. The reform is expected to have a first-round cost of about 15 billion euros due to the tax cut and the increase in child related benefits, with a reduction in inequality of around 0.5 percentage points of Gini index. The second-round effects confirm the reduction in inequality and indicate an initial self-financing effect of about 7%. Our estimates support the importance of integrating micro- and macroeconomic insights for a more accurate assessment of the impact of public policies. 

Working Papers

“When merit breeds luck (or not): An experimental study on distributive Justice and the veil of ignorance” with Michele Bernasconi and Valeria Maggian. Working Paper: Department of Economics, Ca' Foscari University of Venice No. 02/ WP/ 2023. [DOWNLOAD]  - submitted - 

In this paper, we experimentally investigate subjects' preferences for redistribution depending on i) their personal stake in the outcome (either absent or not), ii) the effect of luck in strengthening or weakening the income inequality as derived from merit, and iii) whether individuals are informed about their relative wealth position in the society or not. We find that self-interest is the main driver of subjects' redistributive choices when having direct monetary interests in the outcome. Leaving subjects under the veil of ignorance about their relative gross income position shrinks selfish behavior, also controlling for beliefs and risk attitudes. Inequality aversion and fairness mostly affect redistributive choices of impartial spectators when recipients of redistribution are not informed about their initial endowments, suggesting that the luck vs. merit effect is not the only driver of redistribution choices on behalf of others. 

Work in Progress

"The effect of climate news on cilmate policy support" with with Moritz Drupp, Andreas Lange, Grischa Perino and Mrunali Damania.

How does scientific news about the natural and social dimensions of climate science affect support for climate policy in the general population? We study this fundamental question with a large-scale survey experiment that exposes 8,000 members of the general population in Germany to both good and bad news about climate science, alongside control treatments that contain information but no news. Specifically, we consider news on the magnitude of climate sensitivity, the effectiveness of climate policy instruments, and the plausibility of reaching the Paris climate targets. We also examine the emotions evoked by different kinds of news and the effect of those emotions on support for climate policy.  We find that providing bad news about climate change tends to increase overall support for ambitious climate policies, while providing good news decreases support for ambitious climate policies only when individuals also perceive the news positively. Negative feelings such as worry, guilt, or discouragement tend to increase support for climate policies. In contrast, positive feelings such as calmness and hopefulness have no effect, while encouragement tends to decrease support for climate policies.

"How forward-attribution of climate change affects individual behavior and climate policy support" with Shivanshi Asthana, Johanna Baehr, Leonard Borchert, Sebastian Brune,  Moritz Drupp, Andreas Lange, Grischa Perino and Mrunali Damania

Heat waves pose health threats to the general population and vulnerable groups in particular in Europe (van Daalen et al., 2024). We conduct a large-scale online experiment with a general population sample in Germany (N = 4,200) to test how households respond to predictions of the number of heat events in their regions for the summer of 2024. Furthermore, we identify the impact of ’forward attribution’ to climate change, i.e., information on how the prediction would have differed for a world without anthropogenic climate change. Heat events are the number of tropical nights, i.e., with a temperature minimum of at least 20°C, during summer 2024 (June - August) in the 75percentile of an ensemble with 30 members and originate from regular seasonal forecasts conducted by the University of Hamburg in co-operation with Germany’s National Meteorological Service (Deutscher Wetterdienst) on the super-computer of the German Climate Computing Center (DKRZ) and have a resolution of 100km x 100km. All participants are informed about the health risks caused by heat events and tropical nights. In the experimental condition 'Prediction', participants are exposed to the prediction for the number of heat events in their region of residence. In the experimental condition 'Prediction + Forward Attribution' (short: 'Attribution'), participants receive the same information as in 'Prediction' but in addition also learn the number of predicted heat events / tropical nights for a typical summer in case of no anthropogenic climate change (e.g., in the year 1850).

A preliminary analysis confirms that exposure to the seasonal prediction significantly shifts beliefs about the number of expected heat events. This change in beliefs in turn impacts revealed-preference measures of support for adaptation and mitigation measures. Forward attribution to climate change appears to only affect personal adaptation measures but neither support for altruistic adaptation, mitigation nor attribution of blame across generations. 

"Cooperation and Transfer in similar one-shot repeated games: experimental evidence on the role of temptation and efficiency"

We experimentally investigate the role of temptation and efficiency in shaping the ability of subjects to cooperate in two indefinitely repeated one-shot games with anonymous random matching, the Stag Hunt (SH) and the Prisoner's Dilemma (PD). Additionally, we test the existence and direction of behavioral spillovers between these two strategic games. Taking the results of Duffy and Fehr (2018) as a baseline, we find that increasing efficiency leads to an increase in cooperation both in SH and PD. Similar to Duffy and Fehr (2018), temptation positively affects cooperation in the SH while there are no significant effects in the PD. Behavioral spillovers between SH and PD are rather limited. We find positive behavioral spillovers from SH in the first stage of subsequent PD when temptation is low. However, the transfer is not persistent as subjects decrease cooperation in the subsequent rounds of the PD, but, in our experiment, where efficiency is high, this decrease in cooperation is lighter than in Duffy and Fehr (2018) where efficiency is low; high efficiency with low temptation delays the return to defection.

"Grassroots and seed money with Multiple Threshold Public Goods" with Luca Corazzini and Christopher Cotton.

In this paper, we consider a misalignment in the preferences over the public goods to be funded between a majority of poor subjects and a minority of rich subjects and we investigate how funding, selection, and success of public goods are impacted when i) rich and poor subjects make their contribution choices sequentially (either the rich subject or the three poor subjects contribute first), and ii) one alternative public good emerges as salient for the poor (or not). Our evidence confirms that the alternative preferred by the wealthy represents a viable coordination device for the group in all treatments with no salience. Contributing to the public good preferred by the wealthy is beneficial for all group members and reduces within-group inequality. In the absence of a salient option for the poor and with the rich subject moving first, both coordination and profits increase. Introducing a salient option per se increases the coordination on the public good preferred by the poor, but does not reduce inequality. Interestingly, when a salient option is combined with the poor subjects moving first, both coordination and profits increase and inequality is also reduced.