Welcome!

I am a microeconomist: I study individuals, their beliefs, their motivations and behaviour. I also study the structure and behaviour of groups and organisations.

One strand of my research on individuals explores the role of attention and memory, and the ways in which memory biases may emerge, influencing beliefs and behaviour. This includes cognitive constraints, as in this work on network cognition; motivated beliefs, as in this research on the determinants of overconfidence; cultural transmission, as in this work on collective memory.

I am also interested in the link between motivated beliefs and sensitivity to different emotions, how this relates to cultural and environmental factors, and the persistence of cultural influences in the presence of environmental change (as in this ongoing research).

Another strand of my research on individual motivation and behaviour explores the impact of social image concerns (caring about how one is perceived by others) in settings where both cooperation and competition play a role, as in this work.

My research on organisations has primarily focused on firms, exploring the relationship between different ways in which managers can be rewarded for good performance and their role in eliciting good performance from others in the organisation, as in this paper. This theoretical work highlighted the importance of financial structure and generated some empirical predictions investigated in this paper.

My focus then shifted from publicly listed firms to innovative startups, studying how to optimally design contracts between entrepreneurs and investors when the latter play an important role in the startup's development and growth, beyond the provision of financial capital (e.g. monitoring, advice), as in this and this  research.

I am also interested in other forms of organisation, including historical ones, which make it possible to study why and how particular types of organisation emerge, grow, prosper and decline, as in this research on merchant guilds.

Most of my research papers are available here  and on my Google Scholar profile.