Nina Hestermann

After obtaining my Phd from the Toulouse School of Economics in 2018 I worked as an associate lecturer at the University of St Andrews for three years, and am now an assistant professor at the Université Polytechnique des Hauts de France.  My research covers topics in applied economics of education, notably the life-long impacts of the quality of care and of stable attachment bonds formed in early childhood on later health, educational attainment, and reported well-being. I also investigate the implications of food choices on health and the environment, and the integration of ethical dilemmata of consumption externalities in individuals' choices, such as the impact of meat consumption on animal welfare or on greenhouse gas emissions. From a behavioral angle, I describe the effect of individuals' preferences on belief formation, notably through the way they process information about themselves and their environment. 

Two recent projects focus on the consequences of selective acquisition and treatment of information when individuals are faced with ethically relevant decisions in their consumption choices. The "meat paradox" discusses the discrepancy between consumers' declarations of concern for animal welfare and for the environment, and their decision to nonetheless consume meat produced from industrially farmed animals. The findings from this model are relevant  for any choice where consumption externalities play a role, such as greenhouse gas emissions, child labour, the reduction of biodiversity....and where individuals have to trade-off the pleasure they derive from consumption against feelings of unease about the harm inflicted through their actions on other sentient beings or on the environment. In these situations they may refuse to acquire information susceptible to reduce their enjoyment of the good, thus suppressing feelings of guilt and unease. We suggest ways to optimally convey imformation on consumption externalities so as to  facilitate knwoledge acquisition, and thus the formation of realistic beliefs about the moral dimension of consumption, thereby favouring ethically congruent choices.  

In ongoing work on ways to foster the motivation of students to invest in their education, we collect data on French undergraduates to examine the effect that receiving feedback on their performance has on the time the students decide to spend studying for their next exam. This follows up on recent theoretical work investigating the consequences of motivated belief formation when information is ego-relevant. 

We find that distortions due to self-esteem management have consequences for beliefs formed about external factors, and thus may affect the choice to exert effort, to switch jobs, or the ability to work in teams. 

More recently, my focus has been on the design of institutions that facilitate peaceful resolution of conflicts and foster empathy and mutual understanding, facilitate the evolution towards more compassionate and peaceful interpersonal relations, and thus limit the resort to violence with its deleterious consequences on well-being and cohesion in society. Work on restorative justice practices, and their potential to replace traditional repressive and punitive responses to violent crime, to domestic or sexual violence, but also to be employed in every stage of education, from primary school to college, was inspired by my volunteering activity as a facilitator in mediation where I could observe their powerful and transformative effects.

Please find below a link to my CV, as well as links to my publications and topics of work in progress.

You can download my CV in English here,  and the French version here .

Email: nina.hestermann<at>gmail.com 

Publications: 

Experimentation with Self-Serving Attribution Biases, with Yves Le Yaouanq ( American Economic Journal: Microeconomics, 13(3): 198-237, 2021) 

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This article studies the dynamic experimentation problem of an agent in a situation where the outcomes depend on two uncertain variables: the individual’s intrinsic ability and an external variable which is imperfectly known. We analyze the mistakes in inferences and experimentation decisions made by decision-makers who hold inaccurate prior beliefs about their ability. We show that overconfident individuals overestimate the importance of intrinsic ability relative to external factors if they succeed and underestimate it if they fail. The long-run welfare effects of initial miscalibrations in self-confidence are asymmetric: overconfident individuals are too easily dissatisfied with their environment, which endogenously leads them to experiment too much and to revise their self-confidence downwards over time; in contrast, underconfident decision-makers might be trapped in low-quality environments and incur utility losses forever. We discuss the implications of this theory for the attribution of guilt and merit in teams, and the formation of preferences over redistributive policies.  

An Economic Model of the Meat Paradox, with Yves le Yaouanq and Nicolas Treich (European Economic Review, vol. 129, 2020, article 103569) 

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Many individuals have empathetic feelings towards animals but frequently consume meat products. We investigate this "meat paradox" using insights from the literature on motivated reasoning in moral dilemmata. A survey administered to around 3000 consumers representative of the French population documents a systematic and strong correlation between individuals' consumption habits and their perceptions of the suffering of intensively farmed animals. We develop a model where individuals form self-serving beliefs about the suffering of animals caused by meat consumption in order to alleviate the guilt associated with their dietary choices. The model predicts that the price of meat has a causal effect on individuals' beliefs: high prices foster realism by lowering the re-turns to self-deception, which magnify the price elasticity of meat consumption. The model also predicts a positive relationship between individuals' taste for meat and their propensity to engage in self-deception, a causal effect of aggregate consumption on individual beliefs, and the coexistence of equilibria of "collective realism" and "collective denial".   (The survey questionnaire can be consulted here.)

Does the provision of information on their skills affect students' enrollment choices? with Nicolas Pistolesi ( Économie et Prévision, vol. 211, 2018, pp. 177–193) 

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This study assesses the impact of a French educational policy reform aimed at improving the match between students and their chosen field of study at university. As part of this reform, upon applying for entry to an undergraduate degree course, universities inform students about their likelihood of succeeding in their chosen field of study, based on their grades in high school and other indicators of their academic skills. To examine the effect of the feedback they receive on students' choices, we compare students applying to different departments within the same university, some of which implement the policy, providing candidates with feedback, whereas others do not. We find that among those receiving a negative feedback, the proportion of students who decide to enroll for the degree course in question is reduced by about 12 percentage points.

Work in Progress: .

The impact of restorative justice measures after violent crime: victims' perspectives    

Performance Feedback and Study Effort : Empirical Evidence from French Undergraduates (with Nicolas Pistolesi)

Self-Serving Attributions and Effort Investment : An Experimental Investigation (with Yves Le Yaouanq)