Research
Research
Publications
Whose Preferences Matter for Redistribution: Cross-Country Evidence, with Alain Cohn, Raymond Fisman, and Michel Maréchal.
Journal of Political Economy: Microeconomics, 2025, Vol. 3 (1), pp. 1-24.
[Article] [NBER Working Paper] [Replication Package]
Using cross-sectional data from 93 countries, we investigate the relationship between the desired level of redistribution among citizens from different socioeconomic backgrounds and the actual extent of government redistribution. Our focus on redistribution arises from the inherent class conflicts it engenders in policy choices, allowing us to examine whose preferences are reflected in policy formulation. Contrary to prevailing assumptions regarding political influence, we find that the preferences of the lower socioeconomic group, rather than those of the median or upper strata, are most predictive of realized redistribution. This finding contradicts the expectations of both leading experts and regular citizens.
Working Papers
Market Luck: Skill-Biased Inequality and Redistributive Preferences, with Simona Sartor.
[Current Draft]
Market forces beyond individual control are a central driver of income inequality - a phenomenon we call market luck. We examine whether such inequalities are perceived as fair in experiments in the United States. Workers are randomly assigned skills and matched with producers demanding specific skills, generating income differences correlated with skill but unrelated to effort. Individuals are more accepting of market-generated inequality than of equivalent inequality generated by a lottery. This acceptance increases only when workers' effort creates value for others. Survey experiments corroborate these findings, and individuals’ fairness views predict policy preferences. Experiments in France and China yield consistent results.
Billionaire Superstar: Public Image and Demand for Taxation, with Ricardo Perez-Truglia.
Revise & resubmit at American Economic Journal: Economic Policy
[Current Draft][NBER Working Paper]
In the United States, there are 741 billionaires with a combined net worth of $5.2 trillion. These billionaires live highly public lives, with some achieving superstar status. Despite growing inequality, billionaires face effective tax rates lower than the average American. Is this due to a lack of public support for taxation? Is it due to misperceptions about billionaires' lives and careers? To address these questions, we conducted a survey experiment with a sample of 9,013 Americans. We designed multiple treatments based on research on preferences for redistribution and arguments made by academics, journalists, and the general public to increase taxes on the ultra-wealthy. Our findings reveal significant misperceptions about billionaires, with individuals updating their beliefs in response to information. Contrary to expert predictions that all treatments would positively affect the demand for taxation, most treatments have a null or negative effect. Providing information about the lavish lifestyles of billionaires does have a robust positive effect on the demand for taxation.
Mission Possible: The Collection of High-Quality Online Data, with Can Çelebi, Christine Exley, Sören Harrs, Hannu Kivimaki, and Marta Serra-Garcia
[Current Draft] [GitHub Repository]
High-quality data is essential to social science research. Online experiments and surveys are a central tool for data collection across many disciplines, but their data quality could be lacking, due to the presence of automated agents, participants who use LLMs without researcher knowledge, and inattentive participants. We identify behavioral patterns that can serve as data quality checks by collecting data from human subjects in the lab, automated agents, and online survey platforms. We further propose the two-stage recruitment method by which researchers first implement a short survey on their target sample and use checks to exclude plausibly low-quality responses. We test the method with a set of checks and demonstrate how data quality can improve with this method.
Who Wants to Break Up Big Firms? Harm, Fairness, and the Demand for Antitrust, with Ricardo Perez-Truglia.
[NBER Working Paper]
The rise of superstar firms has made dominant companies central to modern economic life, and antitrust enforcement is one of the main policy tools for regulating their market power. Public opinion can shape the political and regulatory environment in which antitrust enforcement takes place, yet there is little direct evidence on what drives these preferences. We conduct a pre-registered information-provision experiment with 4,000 American households. Respondents were told about one of five real antitrust cases and randomly assigned to information treatments designed to study four potential drivers of support for antitrust enforcement: perceived market share, perceived consumer harm, perceived unfair competition, and perceived negative image. All four treatments moved the beliefs they were designed to affect, but their effects on demand for antitrust differed sharply. Information about consumer harm had the most systematic effects: it increased plaintiff support and support for break-up and conduct remedies, with effects remaining visible one month later, and also spilled over to broader support for antitrust policies. By contrast, and contrary to expert forecasts, information about market share had no meaningful effect on demand for antitrust enforcement. The findings suggest that the public thinks like economists in one key respect: they do not care about market share per se, but respond instead to consumer harm. One factor outside the core economic framework, perceived unfair competition, also matters, though its effects are more limited in scope. We discuss implications for policymakers and regulators.
Work in Progress
The Supply and Demand of Respect, with Sören Harrs.
First round of data collection completed.
The History of Redistributive Arguments, with Hooman Habibnia, Oda Nedregård, and Morten Støstad
Data analysis in progress.