• "Cultural Transmission with Incomplete Information," Della Lena, S., Panebianco, F. (2021).  Journal of Economic Theory, 198, 105373. (Preprint, SSRN)

• "On the Transmission of Guilt Aversion and the Evolution of Trust," Della Lena, S., Manzoni, E., & Panebianco, F.  (2023). Games and Economic Behavior, 142, 765-793. (Preprint, SSRN) 

•  "The Spread of Misinformation in Networks with Social and Individual Learning" (2024).  European Economic Review, 168, 104804.  (Preprint, SSRN)

WORKING PAPERS and R&R

• Affective Polarization, Media Outlet, and Opinion Dynamics  (2023),  with Luca Merlino and Yves Zenou. (CEPR) [R&R Review of Economic Studies, 2nd round]

We study opinion dynamics in a social network consisting of two groups. Agents update their opinions by conforming to members of their own group while reject- ing the views of the opposing group (affective polarization), and by listening to a media outlet that may provide biased information. We characterize the long-run opinions and identify conditions under which affective polarization and media bias lead to ideological polarization, persistent disagreement, or failures of learning. We also analyze different policy interventions and show that providing more accurate information to the entire society improves learning and reduces disagreement only when group biases have opposite signs, whereas, when biases share the same sign, it is optimal to target only the more extreme group.

• How do you know you won’t like it if you’ve never tried it? Preferences discovery and strategic bundling (2025), with Alessio Muscillo and Paolo Pin.  (SSRN, 2024)

Consumers discover their preferences through experience, yet the sequence and compo- sition of those experiences are often designed—by platforms, algorithms, or policymakers. Adopting a “data-design” approach to preference discovery, we study how the structure of consumption data affect learning. When experiences are bundled, the co-occurrence of goods creates a network of correlation externalities that shapes how consumption surprise propagates across products. Using tools from OLS estimation and spectral analysis, we characterize the conditions that favor learning and preference discovery and those that sustain bias. The framework introduces a new way to think about learning from designed data, providing a foundation for new theoretical and applied work on preference discovery and belief manipulation. A toy empirical example from the movie industry illustrates the model’s key mechanisms.

• An Economic Model of Acculturation under Strategic Complements and Substitutes (2025), with Pietro Dindo.  (SSRN, 2024)

We propose a cultural transmission model based on the co-evolution of cultural traits, behaviors, and socialization levels. Cultural traits affect agents’ behavior during their interaction in a strategic environment. In turn, behaviors affect both how much parents directly socialize their children and the traits they decide to transmit. We describe the co-evolution of cultural traits and behaviors, and their long-run outcomes, in terms of well-established acculturation processes:  assimilation, integration, marginalization, and separation. We characterize how the occurrence of each process depends on the nature of the strategic environment (complements or substitutes), the cost of transmitting traits, and the size of the majority.

• How Parents and Firms’ Hiring Policies Affect Labor Outcomes (2024), with Shahir Safi and Yves Zenou (CEPR)

This paper examines the interplay between social networks, firm hiring policies, and the transmission of work ethics across generations. Specifically, we analyze how firms’ preferences for weak-tie referrals versus traditional screening methods influence long-term labor market outcomes, including wages and employment. We also explore the role of parents in shaping their children’s work ethics and how these cultural traits affect labor market integration. The findings reveal that while weak-tie referrals may provide short-term employment benefits, they also contribute to long-run inequalities in wages and work ethics between different social groups. Furthermore, differentiated hiring policies, while effective in the short term, can perpetuate social disparities if not properly addressed through integrative policies.

• God, Guilt, and Giving: Public Good Contribution among Catholics and Protestants (2025). with Francesco Cinnirella, Elena Manzoni, and Fabrizio Panebianco

We study how religious ethics shape contributions to public goods by developing a theoretical model that characterizes Protestants and Catholics as representing, respectively, an individualistic and a collectivistic ethic. Both are motivated by a fixed contribution target and by the desire not to disappoint others, but Protestants place more weight on the individual target while Catholics place more weight on social expectations. The model predicts no differences at low incomes, but diverging patterns at middle and upper incomes, with Catholics’ contributions shaped by community composition. Using German panel data, we find evidence consistent with these predictions and flatter income responses among Catholics. 

• Zero-sum environments, public good provision, and social connectedness (2025) with Yannick Jansen and Yves Zenou

We study a public good game on a network where agents can either contribute to a public good or extract rents, thus generating a public bad. We characterize equilibrium contributions and show that both existence and structure depend on network density. In dense networks, the opportunity for rent extraction induces cyclic behavior: players alternate between full public good provision and full rent extraction, yielding non-monotonic welfare outcomes. When the network is endogenously formed, equilibrium among homogeneous agents produces regular directed networks in which all players contribute equally. This reveals a fundamental rela- tionship between the degree of zero-sumness in the strategic environment, public good provision, and social connectedness: as zero-sumness increases, equilibrium public good provision rises while network density declines.

OTHER PUBLICATIONS

• "Why Do Consumers Prefer One Brand Over Another? The Economics and Sociology of Brand Competitiveness," Della Lena, S, Timming, A (2023) .  Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services, 74, 103416. Special issue ‘Brand Competitiveness’ [invited submission].

WORK IN PROGRESS