Research Interests
Human Cognition and Decision Making
Public Policy
Behavioural and Experimental Economics
Health Economics - practitioner and patient choices and market dynamics
Applied micro-econometrics
Application of Machine Learning in Economics & Simulation Modelling
Publications
C. Schilling, S. Annable, and J. McLaughlin (2026). Projected unmet need for specialist palliative care in Australia: a national workforce model. Journal of Pain and Symptom Management. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jpainsymman.2026.07.032
Abstract: Context: Demand for specialist palliative care is increasing due to population ageing and rising mortality, yet growth in the specialist workforce remains constrained. The implications of these trends for access to care and unmet need at the population level are not well quantified. Objectives: To project specialist palliative care workforce capacity in Australia and estimate resulting workforce-constrained unmet need for palliative care. Methods: We developed a national palliative care service planning model to project workforce supply (physicians and nurses) from 2025 to 2045 using empirically estimated flows by age, sex, geography, and profession. Required workforce capacity was estimated using nationally endorsed staffing benchmarks indexed to projected mortality. Unmet need was defined as the gap between required and available capacity, expressed as the number of decedents unable to access minimum recommended levels of specialist palliative care. Results: lthough the palliative care physician workforce is projected to grow at 3.1% (95% CI: 2.4–3.7%) annually, this is insufficient to match increasing mortality-driven demand. By 2045, an estimated 106,470 decedents (95% CI: 82,402–129,736) each year will be unable to access recommended levels of specialist palliative care, over 38,500 more than at present. Cumulatively, almost 1.7 million Australians are projected to experience unmet need for palliative care between 2025 and 2045. Geographic inequities are substantial, with outer regional areas accounting for 15% of unmet need despite comprising 8% of the population. Growth in the nursing workforce is modest and does not offset rising demand. Conclusion: Under current trajectories, specialist palliative care capacity in Australia is unlikely to keep pace with population need, leading to substantial and widening gaps in access. These findings suggest that unmet need is a structural feature of the system rather than a transient shortfall. Addressing this gap will require expansion of the workforce, changes in service delivery, including greater integration of generalist practitioners, timing of palliative care delivery, and more flexible, system-level approaches to care.
Stamos, A., McLaughlin, J., Bruyneel, S., & Dewitte, S. (2021). A preregistered study of the relationship between childhood socioeconomic background, life history strategies and conformity. Journal of Research in Personality, 92, 104095. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jrp.2021.104095
Abstract: We conducted a high powered pre-registered study to investigate the relationship between childhood socioeconomic status, the adoption of different life history strategies and conformity. Contrary to our expectation we found no direct relationship between childhood socioeconomic background and conformity. However, we discovered a significant association between life history strategies and conformity. People who adopt fast (slow) life history strategies conform less (more) to social suggestions. Furthermore, we found a relationship between childhood socioeconomic background and life history strategies, with people from low (high) childhood socioeconomic backgrounds adopting fast (slow) life history strategies.
E. Botchway, J. McLaughlin, I. Van der Beken, J. Verpooten, & S. Dewitte (2025). "Loyalty Programs in Second-Hand Markets Stimulate Demand but May Interfere With Supply." Circular Economy and Sustainability .
Abstract: This study investigates a specific attribute of the circular economy, the direct reuse of old products, and the use of the traditional marketing mechanism of loyalty programs of stimulating this attribute. We conducted two studies into common (clothing) and uncommon (electronics) second-hand markets, testing the effectiveness of rewarding purchases and donations in stimulating the (intended) demand and supply in second-hand stores. Our findings indicate the effectiveness of various loyalty programs in stimulating the intention to repurchase in second-hand stores. We also identify that a loyalty program, which rewards purchases and donations, can effectively stimulate the supply to second-hand stores, but only for customers with a low donation history. However, for those with a substantial donation history, loyalty programs that rewards donations reduce their donation intentions.
Gauriot, R., Liu, Y., McLaughlin, J., & Miller, J. B. (2024). A Computational reproduction of “Intrinsic Information Preferences and Skewness” by Masatlioglu, Orhun and Raymond (2023). https://hdl.handle.net/10419/303902.
Abstract: Masatlioglu et al. (2023) show a strong intrinsic preference for positively skewed information over negatively skewed information through three laboratory and two field experiments. Using the provided replication package, we successfully computationally reproduce these results. Additionally, we test the robustness of the findings by employing alternative statistical tests, which confirmed the original conclusions. We also make minor comments about the paper that may be useful to researchers building on Masatlioglu et al. (2023)'s work.
Work in Progress
McLaughlin, J. and Mortimer, D. (2026). What Drives Predictive Accuracy in Risky Choice? The Role of Heterogeneity, Stochasticity, and Model Specification. Submitted and in journal review process.
Abstract: Understanding human decision making requires models that accommodate stochastic choice and heterogeneity across individuals and contexts. Recent work shows substantial gains in predictive accuracy when models move beyond deterministic frameworks, yet systematic large-scale comparisons of competing stochastic operators remain limited. We provide the largest empirical test to date of an attraction-factor model of risky choice, a quantum-inspired stochastic operator drawn from the Yukalov-Sornette quantum decision theory tradition, benchmarked against deterministic, random utility, and mixture-of-theories models using choice13k, a dataset of over 9,800 risky choice problems. Employing machine learning estimation and rigorous cross-validation, we compare three model variants (deterministic, random utility, and attraction-factor) across four theoretical foundations, pitting workhorse models against the attraction-factor specification as implemented in empirical applications. Consistent with prior findings, stochastic models substantially outperform deterministic models, and mixture-of-theories models yield the largest gains. Within stochastic models, random utility outperforms the attraction-factor model across most specifications: a theoretically distinctive stochastic correction has only modest predictive returns against strong classical baselines. The attraction-factor model contributes most within mixture-of-theories frameworks, where it achieves the lowest overall error, though the improvement over random utility alone is modest (a 1.8% relative reduction in mean squared error). This advantage is conditional rather than uniform. The gap between the attraction-factor model and random utility narrows monotonically as the underlying model's capacity to represent heterogeneity increases. The largest gains therefore stem from modelling heterogeneity across individuals and contexts, rather than from the choice of stochastic operator, disciplining expectations about what stochastic generalisations can deliver.
McLaughlin, J., Mortimer, D. & Dewitte, S. Intrinsic Task Interest & Pro-Social Outcome Interest: Experimental Evidence of Incentive Compatibility. In development.
Abstract: We explore the motivational dynamics of incentives for pro-social activity. Using a novel experimental approach we separate intrinsic task interest and pro-social outcome interest (i.e., mission belief) and explore to what extent either are extrinsic incentive compatible. Current literature has concentrated on identifying the source of intrinsic motivation, such as altruism or warm-glow, and exploring whether intrinsic motives are crowded out by extrinsic incentives, yielding mixed findings. Theoretical work in this space has laid a foundation for assessing principal and agent motives and the outcomes of incentives, monetary or status, in mission orientated workplaces. We expand this to an empirical analysis and explore the interaction of these incentives with the two types of intrinsic motives, providing clarity to the ambiguous results in the literature with a robust dataset of real effort outcomes.
McLaughlin, J. and Mortimer, D. Who Captures Government Subsidies? Incidence, Quality, and Welfare in a Mixed Public-Private Market. Submitted and in journal review process.
Abstract: Government subsidies in privately supplied markets often generate equilibrium responses that obscure their true incidence. Evaluating these effects is particularly challenging when the relevant counterfactual market does not yet exist. This paper develops an ex ante empirical framework that combines an incentivised two-sided choice experiment with a capacity-constrained matching simulation to recover behavioural responses on both demand and supply sides and aggregate them into equilibrium outcomes. We apply this approach to evaluate a proposed dental subsidy in Australia, a setting characterised by price exclusion, provider heterogeneity, and supply constraints. A central finding is that subsidy incidence cannot be inferred from observed price changes alone. While provider-level estimates indicate that 39 cents of each subsidy dollar is passed through to lower out-of-pocket prices, equilibrium prices fall by an amount close to the full subsidy due to endogenous entry and sorting. Access increases substantially, but gains are concentrated among price-sensitive consumers and are attenuated in supply-constrained markets. Quality declines modestly as providers adjust pricing and service provision jointly. Net welfare increases, driven primarily by extensive-margin access gains, though the distribution of benefits depends critically on market structure. The framework demonstrates how equilibrium incidence and welfare can be evaluated in prospective policy settings using experimentally identified preferences, providing a tractable approach for policy analysis when post-reform data are unavailable.
J. McLaughlin, J. Philip, V. Sundararajan, B.H. Le, A. Collins, and C. Schilling (2026). Association of Early Palliative Care with Healthcare Utilisation and Spending Among Adults Dying of Cancer. (under review)
Abstract: Background: Palliative care for advanced cancer is often introduced late. Whether earlier referral affects healthcare utilisation and spending near the end of life is important for service planning internationally. Aim: To estimate differences in healthcare utilisation and acute-sector spending between earlier and later palliative care referral among adults who died from cancer. Design: Retrospective population-based cohort study using linked administrative health data. Adjusted differences were estimated using inverse probability of treatment weighting, with prespecified sensitivity analyses. Setting/participants: Adults aged 18 years or older who died of cancer-related causes in Victoria, Australia (2018–2023), identified via the state cancer registry and linked administrative health records. Earlier palliative care was first receipt more than 90 days before death, or within six weeks of diagnosis if survival was under 90 days, other care was classified as later. Cohort: 38,697 recipients (17,409 earlier; 21,288 later). Results: Earlier referral was associated with lower measured acute-sector spending in the final 90 days of life ($3,858 per person; 95% CI $2,592–$5,131), approximately 14% of mean spending for that period, driven mainly by lower hospitalisation and chemotherapy costs, with a smaller emergency department contribution. Results were consistent across sensitivity analyses addressing model specification, target estimand, matching method, and unmeasured confounding. Conclusions: Earlier palliative care referral was associated with lower acute hospital-based service use and spending near the end of life. Referral timing appears to be a modifiable system-level lever for reallocating care. Total cost effects remain uncertain as palliative and community-based costs were not captured.
Other
McLaughlin, J. (2020). Master Thesis: Heuristics in Strategic Decision Making. Unpublished Manuscript.
Abstract: The adaptive use of heuristics by individuals of various strategic reasoning levels is identified, given the applicable environmental characteristics. An experiment is developed utilising the framework of ring games, in which the game design is adapted to identify reasoning levels as well as specific heuristic profiles. Individual’s strategic reasoning levels are identified prior to evidencing their strategies shift to heuristic rules when time pressure is applied. Significant evidence of strategy shift to heuristic use is found for individuals within each strategic reasoning level. Furthermore, various patterns of strategy shift between strategic reasoning levels are highlighted, as are various information search patterns which are identified by mouse-tracking. Finally, an extended cognitive reflection test (CRT), as a measure of cognitive ability, identifies significant gender differences, however, no significant correlation is found between the strategic reasoning levels and the CRT results.