Carbon Pricing and Bounded Reasoning

PDF Under review

I show that weak support for economist-backed policy proposals is due in part to mistakes that voters make when reasoning about their consequences. I introduce a new policy that is isomorphic to a leading carbon tax-and-rebate proposal, but engineered to be robust to a key error that I identify in a lab setting. In a U.S. nationally representative survey, the new policy is more than 30 percentage points more popular. I show that this increase in support is concentrated among people who experienced difficulty fully assessing the original carbon tax policy.

Endogenous Green Preferences

PDF Under review

With Guglielmo Zappala

Across 38 countries, we study the dynamics of environmental policies and individual preferences over twenty years. Exploiting within-country, across birth-cohort variation in exposure to environmental policy stringency, we document that cohorts exposed to more stringent policies in the past are more supportive of environmental policies thereafter.

The New York Congestion Charge

Pre-analysis plan, Draft coming soon

With Stefano Carattini, Jonathan Hall, Axel Ockenfels and Klaus Schmidt

Price, Demand and Hypothetical Thinking

Draft coming soon

When people are asked to make policy choices that affect a good's price, we traditionally assume that they accurately perceive quantities demanded conditional on price. But a number of potential reasoning mistakes could interfere with such an assessments. We comprehensively decompose the role of these potential mistakes in incentivized experiments and surveys and point to tools that can overcome public skepticism about market-based policies to address a range of issues, with an emphasis on externalities.

Skeptics as Missionaries

In Progress

With Lucy Page

If incentivized to persuade a skeptic to believe , do fellow skeptics, former skeptics, or those who believe do a better job, and why?

Sophistication, Fairness and Markets

In Progress

With Austin Brooksby

How do beliefs about the sophistication of participants affect attitudes about the fairness of markets?

Generative AI and Music

In Progress

With Joe Longuevan

Quick Facts

Ph.D. in Economics: UC Santa Barbara, 2024
Relevant fields: Public policy, microeconomic and behavioral theory, experiments, political economy, environmental and resource economics, and AI.
Talks and Awards: 2025, CU Environmental and Resource Economics Vail Workshop, Crocker-Powell Junior Faculty Research Award, European Association of Environmental and Resource Economists Annual Conference, Association of Environmental and Resource Economists Summer Conference; 2024, Economic Science Association North America, University of Melbourne; 2023, Western Economic Association Annual Conference, CESifo Venice Summer Institute, Occasional Workshop in Environmental and Resource Economics, Economic Science Association North America.
Teaching Experience: Principles of Finance, Introduction to Macroeconomic Theory, Intermediate Microeconomic Theory, Introduction to Microeconomic Theory, Game Theory, Econometrics, Public Economic Theory, Environmental Economics