1. Who Takes the Blame, Who Claims the Credit? Gender Differences in Self-Attribution 

 (Status: Under review)

Link to Working Paper

This paper examines whether men and women differ in how they attribute responsibility for success and failure, and whether these differences persist when attribution affects evaluation by others. In a series of online experiments, participants justify outcomes in a knowledge task with unobservable individual contributions by allocating responsibility between themselves and a partner. Women are more likely to take blame for failures and less likely to claim credit for successes, even when controlling for performance and beliefs about ability. These differences persist when attribution messages are observed by a potential employer and are more pronounced among top female performers. Employers favor candidates who deflect blame and claim credit, translating these attribution patterns into differences in hiring outcomes and expected earnings. The results suggest that attribution operates as a distinct behavioral mechanism—separate from performance and confidence—that contributes to promotion and pay gaps.

2. (Re)Measuring Preferences for Competition (with Ernesto Reuben)

 (Status: Reject-Resubmit)

Link to working paper 

This study investigates individuals' competitive behavior. We present two experiments designed to evaluate the consistency of individuals' choices to compete, obtain direct measures of their preferences for competition, and evaluate the stability of these preferences over time. We find strong evidence that many individuals are willing to forgo a significant portion of their expected earnings to either engage in or avoid competition. Additionally, their choices are consistent with expected utility maximization, and are relatively stable over time. Preferences for competition vary with the number of competitors but we do not find significant differences by gender.

3. The Impact of the Menstrual Cycle on Bargaining Behavior: A Large Scale Experiment (with Arno Riedl and Christina Rott)

 (Status: Under review)

Link to working paper

We investigate experimentally whether bargaining behavior varies across menstrual cycle phases. In a pre-registered online experiment, naturally cycling female participants negotiate in an unstructured bilateral bargaining game with asymmetric information about the size of the surplus. Participants tracked their menstrual cycles for three months prior to the bargaining session, allowing us to estimate the cycle phase at the time of the negotiation. Across a large sample of 655 participants, we find no systematic evidence that bargaining behavior or outcomes differ across menstrual cycle phases. Initial offers and demands, concession behavior, agreement rates, conditional payoffs, and final payoffs are statistically similar across phases for both informed and uninformed players. Instead, bargaining outcomes are strongly shaped by other features of the negotiation environment, such as information asymmetry, pie size, initial bargaining positions, and learning across rounds. These findings suggest that previously documented menstrual-cycle-related behavioral variation does not robustly generalize to a bilateral bargaining environment with asymmetric information, highlighting the importance of institutional context in shaping economic behavior.

4. Coordination through Bargaining in Weakest-link Games (with Andrzej Baranski and Nikos Nikiforakis)

Link to working paper

Coordination problems are often modeled as weakest-link games, where the minimumcontributing agent determines their group’s surplus to be shared in equal parts. Yet in many settings, the sharing of a jointly-produced surplus occurs through bargaining, which acts as a double-edged sword: It can promote effort by disciplining low contributors or deter it through the added uncertainty of returns. We present experimental

evidence that bargaining improves coordination by promoting equitable divisions that reward higher contributions, even in one-shot interactions. High contributors are more likely than low contributors to propose allocations that reward effort, creating a virtuous cycle that increases efficiency. Allowing groups to endogenously select who can act as proposers can backfire: Efficiency increases when high contributors are endorsed but falls otherwise. These results highlight the scope and limits of participatory surplus

division mechanisms in providing incentives for efficient coordination.

 5. Estimating Preferences for Competition from Convex Budget Sets  (with Ernesto Reuben)

(Working paper available upon request)

Recently, the literature in experimental economics has linked the laboratory measurement of preferences for competition with labor market outcomes and educational choices. If preferences for competition are an important determinant of behavior, it is crucial to develop an accurate approach to measure them. In this study, we test whether preferences for competition can be rationalized by a utility function and develop a framework for the joint treatment of preferences for competition and risk. Our design improves on previous work in that it generates a rich data-set of individual-level choices. This allows us to test whether choices to enter tournaments are consistent with GARP and to estimate with a high degree of certainty the extent to which these choices are explained by a pure taste for competition. Our findings provide strong evidence of a pure preference for competition at individual level, that can be captured both by an additive and curvature term in the utility function. Also, we observe that risk and competition are structurally associated, which suggests that ignoring such a relation between both traits can bias the estimation of preferences for competition. 

 6. When incentives change behavioral inference about group differences and income  (with Moritz Janas,  Robert Stüber, and Nikos Nikiforakis)

Lozano, L., Ranehill, E., Reuben, E. (2022). Gender and Preferences in the Labor Market: Insights from Experiments. In: Zimmermann, K.F. (eds) Handbook of Labor, Human Resources and Population Economics. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-57365-6_118-1

Despite increased female educational attainment and labor market participation, labor markets around the world remain characterized by vertical and horizontal gender segregation. This chapter reviews recent findings from the experimental economics literature that shed light on some of the causes of gender differences in labor market outcomes. First, it reviews the recent literature using incentivized measures of attitudes toward risk and competition to study the extent to which gender differences in these traits help explain gender differences in educational and career choices as well as earnings. Second, it reviews the experimental literature on gender differences in negotiations. Third, it concludes by discussing the recent experimental literature on gender discrimination, emphasizing beliefs about productivity as the mechanism leading to differential hiring of men and women. Experiments are a powerful tool to explain gender differences in labor markets as they create controlled environments where causal links can be derived and exact mechanisms can be identified.

Excessive and Conspicuous Consumption: Evidence from the United Arab Emirates (with Nikos Nikiforakis, Federico Bernardini, Chiara Cappellini, Moritz Janas, Davide Marchiori, Simon Siegenthaler, and Rasha Attar)

Scholars have long argued that in affluent societies individuals may engage in excessive consumption (EC), i.e., consume beyond levels they themselves consider necessary or sustainable, due to social pressures. Despite its relevance for well-being and financial stability, EC has rarely been measured directly. Instead, researchers often rely on conspicuous consumption (CC)—status-oriented, visible spending—as a proxy. Using a large general-population sample from the United Arab Emirates (N = 2,001), we directly elicit self-reported EC and examine its prevalence, predictors, and relationship to CC. We find that the majority of participants report struggling with EC. CC is only weakly correlated with EC. The latter is associated with beliefs about social rewards to owning luxury items and norm misperceptions, whereas CC is not. Our findings suggest that EC and CC reflect distinct psychological and social dynamics. Recognizing this distinction is critical for designing effective, welfare-enhancing policies that go beyond information provision and address social expectations. 

1. Global Stereotypes (with Moritz Janas,  Robert Stüber, Nikos Nikiforakis, and Ernesto Reuben)

Multiple projects from incentivized experiments conducted with 65,000 participants in 70 countries. This project explores global stereotypes by eliciting traits (such as dishonesty, competitiveness, and abstract thinking) and beliefs about these traits in various subgroups, including men/women, old/young people, and high/low-income people.

2. Committee formation, identity signaling, and allocation of scholarships: a field experiment (with Manu Munoz)

UPCOMING

• Esade Workshop in Behavioral and Experimental Economics (EWBEE), Barcelona:  May 2026

RECENT

• 4th Workshop on Gender in Adaptive Design: How can we ensure fair access and beneficial use of digital technologies for everyone? Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, Karlsruhe: March 2026

• 1st Social Behavior and Experiments Meeting (Social Bee Meet), LISER, Luxembourg: January 2026

• Workshop on Recent Advances in Behavioral Economics, GATE, Lyon, November 2025

PAST

• Asia-Pacific Economic Science Association Conference (ESA), Osaka: April, 2025

• ESA North American Meeting (Columbus): October, 2024

• Research Visit at University of Michigan: Sept 9th-27th, 2024

• Behavioral and Experimental Economics Seminar at Michigan University: September 9th.

• Experimental Economics Seminar Series at the University of Milan: May 2nd, 2024

• AXA Gender Lab Seminar at Bocconi University: May 7th, 2024

• Department of Economics Seminar Series at the University of Bergamo: May 2nd, 2024

• 1st Matterhorn Symposium on Behavior, Institutions, and Cooperation (Brig, Switzerland): October, 2023

• ESA European Economics Science Association Conference (Lyon): June, 2023

• ESA Asia-Pacific Economic Science Association Conference (Seoul):  May, 2023

• Interdisciplinary Brownbag Seminar of Behavioral Sciences (Maastricht): December 15, 2022

• Competition & Competitiveness Workshop, University of Essex (Colchester): September 22-23, 2022

• EEA Conference, Bocconi University (Milano ): August 22-26, 2022

• ESA European Meeting (Bologna): August 31- September 03, 2022

• 12th International Conference of the French Association of Experimental Economics (Lyon): 30th June-1st July, 2022

• 14th Maastricht Behavioral and Experimental Economics Symposium (Maastricht): 7 June, 2022

• Interdisciplinary Workshop on Gender Research, NYUAD (Abu Dhabi): March 4th, 2022 

• Stanford Institute for Theoretical Economics (SITE) Experimental Economics Conference (online): Aug 11th, 2021

• ESA 2020 Global Conference  (online):  Oct, 2020

• University of Pittsburgh (Pittsburgh): Jan, 2020

• New York University Abu Dhabi (Abu Dhabi): Nov, 2019

Lecturer at BSB (2025-2026):

Quantitative Methods

Organizational Behavior

Business Communication Tools

Microeconomics and Macroeconomics

Business Communication Tools

TA at Maastricht University (2019-2021):

Economic Games

Economic Psychology 

Understanding Society 

Managerial Economics

Principles in Microeconomics and Macroeconomics