I work at the Department of Economics of Masaryk University. My research interests lie mainly in the field of behavioral and experimental economics, with topics including preference elicitation, conflict emergence, health, and ageing.

This page is dedicated to recent publications and research in progress.  My google scholar profile is here.

My teaching, CV, and a complete list of publications can be found here. 

Recent publications

• Abraham, D., Glejtková, K., & Krčál, O. (forthcoming). The hidden costs of imposing minimum contributions to a global public good. Ecological Economics

• Staněk, R., Krčál, O., Čellárová, K. (forthcoming), Money burning is driven by reciprocity rather than spite, Journal of Economic Science Association

• Kosíková, R., Krčál, O., & Peer, S. (2024). The value of time in a repeated and one-off setup. Research in Transportation Economics, 103, 101408. 

• Krčál, O., Mikula, Š., Staněk, R. (2023): Social capital and mobility: An experimental study. Rationality and Society, vol. 35, No 1, p. 61-80. ISSN 1043-4631. Available from: https://dx.doi.org/10.1177/10434631221134176. 

• Karlínová, B., Krčál, O. (2022): The value of travel time for long-distance railway passenger transport in the Czech Republic. Case Studies on Transport Policy

• Staněk, R., Krčál, O., & Čellárová, K. (2022). Pull yourself up by your bootstraps: Identifying procedural preferences against helping others in the presence of moral hazard. Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics, 98, 101851.

• Krčál, O., Peer, S., & Staněk R (2021). Can time-inconsistent preferences explain hypothetical biases? Economics of Transportation, 25, č. 100207

Work in progress

Motivational Effects of Feeling Trusted (with Diya Abraham) (SEAM 2024)

Abstract: We investigate how workers’ motivation is influenced by whether they feel trusted by managers. In a laboratory experiment, responsibility for a manager’s earnings is divided unequally between two workers. We vary whether this decision is made by the manager or a random device on the manager’s behalf. Importantly, having more/less responsibility does not affect workers’ wages. Despite this, we find workers provide less effort when they are intentionally, vs. randomly, assigned lower responsibility. We find no positive effect of being trusted. We examine potential mechanisms and show that effort reactions can be organized by a model of intention-based reciprocity.

A competitive audit selection mechanism with incomplete information (with Rostislav Staněk, Miloš Fišar, Jiří Špalek, James Tremewan) 

The experimental tax and regulatory compliance literature has found substantial benefits of competitive audit selection mechanisms (ASMs) based on differences in estimated undeclared incomes among taxpayers. This paper studies potential adverseeffects of competitive ASMs when authorities do not possess an unbiased signal of such differences. In a laboratory experiment, we show that the resulting asymmetric information between tax payers and tax authorities reduces compliance and increases inequality in competitive ASMs. Our findings suggest caution regarding the benefits of competitive ASMs and stress the importance of spending resources on reducing income heterogeneity within groups subject to competitive audit selection.

Bad luck in the treatment lottery: Does being untreated impact life satisfaction and pro-sociality? (with Rostislav Staněk, Eliška Černá, Petr Kubala, Štěpán Ripka)

There is some evidence from cash-transfer randomized controlled trials (RCTs) that being untreated may have adverse effects on the affected participants’ psychological well-being. This raises concerns about allocations based on randomization, like those used in social science RCTs, in which some treatments are superior to others and the treatment status is known to the participants. We use a rehousing RCT with low-income families in the Czech Republic to study the effect of not being selected for a treatment that would lead to a substantial improvement in housing quality. While the RCT resulted in a large increase in life satisfaction and psychological well-being for those treated, the values reported by the untreated remained stable. In addition, assignment to the control group did not have any negative effects on the participants’ pro-social preferences or on their perceptions of others’ pro-sociality. These results suggest that, at least in the context of rehousing experiments, being untreated in an RCT does not result in any substantial adverse effects on life satisfaction or pro-sociality.

Does living in substandard housing signal lower trustworthiness and attention? (with Rostislav Staněk) 

This paper combines a Housing First RCT with two laboratory experiments to study the impact of housing conditions on how trustworthy and attentive the Housing First participants are perceived by students in the laboratory. The experimental design enables us to disentangle the effect of housing conditions from the effect of housing history. While low-quality housing has a negative effect on the expected trustworthiness, but no impact on the expected ability to concentrate, people living in good-quality housing are perceived to have a lower ability to concentrate, but are equally trustworthy, when their history of low-quality housing is revealed to students.

Do Improved Housing Conditions Impact Preferences and Attention? Evidence from a Housing First RCT (with Rostislav Staněk)

There is growing evidence that poverty affects people's preferences and cognitive abilities in a way that may lead them to make bad decisions. We take advantage of a unique setup, a housing first RCT, which substantially improved housing conditions for low-income families in the Czech Republic, to provide evidence on the link between housing quality and variables of interest that might affect the quality of economic decisions. We conduct a lab-in-the-field experiment to elicit risk preferences and time preferences and to measure sustained attention. We find that improved housing conditions do not impact any of these three outcome variables. These results are in line with recent evidence on low-income US households.