Research

Working Papers

Appetite for Ignorance: Does eating meat cause information avoidance about its harms? with Bénédicte Droz, Berno Buechel, Monica Capra, Xi Chen, Anis Nassar, Seong-Gyu Park, Jin Xu, Shanshan Zhang
Reject & Resubmit at European Economic Review

To Savor Consumption or to Confront Dread: The Hedonic Opportunity Cost of Attention with Monica Capra and Jin Xu
Revise & Resubmit at Economic Journal

Moral Preferences and the Marketplace of Ideas with Emiliano Huet-Vaughn, Minh Pham, and Eva Vivalt

Beliefs that Entertain with Ashvin Gandhi, Paola Giuliano, Eric Guan, Quinn Keefer and Michaela Pagel

Do Defaults have Spillover Effects? The Effect of the Default Asset on Retirement Plan Contributions with Gopi Shah Goda, Matthew Levy, Colleen Manchester, and Aaron Sojourner

Publications

1. Supervised Machine Learning for Eliciting Individual Demand with John Clithero and Jae Joon Lee
   American Economic Journal: Microeconomics, 2023, 15 (4): 146-82

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2. Are Retirement Planning Tools Substitutes or Complements to Financial Capability? with Gopi Shah Goda, Matthew Levy, Colleen Manchester, Aaron Sojourner, and Jiusi Xiao
   Journal of Economic Behavior and Orlganization, Volume 214, October 2023, Pages 561-573
• “Why retirement calculators fail the people who need them most — and what to do about it” – MarketWatch (Oct 28, 2022)

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3. Low-cost climate-change informational intervention reduces meat consumption among students for 3 years” with Andrew Jalil, and Arturo Vargas-Bustamante
   Nature Food, 02 March 2023
• “How Campus Cafeterias Became Hotspots for Climate Action” – Sentient Media (May 2, 2023)
• “How one lecture on the environmental impact of meat has led to people eating less of it” – Yahoo!News (March 6, 2023)
• “Want to save the planet? A new study shows you just need to talk to people about the meat problem” – Business Insider, India (March 5, 2023)
• “Long-lasting impact of information on meat consumption” – Nature Food (March 3, 2023)
• “Students ate less meat in the three years after hearing talk on its negative environmental impacts” – Phys.org (March 3, 2023)
• “Students ate less meat for three years after a talk on climate impact” – New Scientist (March 2, 2023)

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4. The Performance of Time-Preference and Risk-Preference Elicitations in Surveys with Wenjie Zhang
   Management Science 68(2), 2022, 1149-1173

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5. Changing Hearts and Plates: The Effect of Animal-Advocacy Pamphlets on Meat Consumption with Menbere Haile, Andrew Jalil, and Arturo Vargas-Bustamante
   Frontiers in Psychology, 12 2021: 1892

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6. Eating to Save the Planet: Evidence from a Randomized Controlled Trial Using Individual-Level Food Purchase Data with Andrew Jalil and Arturo Vargas Bustamante
   Food Policy, Volume 95, August 2020, 101950
   
   • Slides
   • Awareness Raising Interventions and Meat Consumption with Josh Tasoff – Behavioural Science Uncovered Podcast (Feb 12, 2021)

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7. Trick for a Treat: The Effect of Costume, Identity, and Peers on Norm Violations with Shanshan Zhang, Narek Bejanyan, Zhou Fang, Matthew Gomies, Jason Justo, Hsin Li, Rainita Narender, Minjae Yun
   Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization, Volume 179, 2020, 460-474.
   
   • “Can a Halloween costume influence a trick-or-treater’s honesty?” – Los Angeles Times (Oct 31, 2019)

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8. Who is a Passive Saver Under Opt-In and Auto-Enrollment with Gopi Shah Goda, Matthew Levy, Colleen Manchester, and Aaron Sojourner
   Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization, Volume 173, May 2020, Pages 301-321

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9. Predicting Retirement Savings Using Survey Measures of Exponential‐Growth Bias and Present Bias with Gopi Shah Goda, Matthew Levy, Colleen Manchester, and Aaron Sojourner
   Economic Inquiry, Vol. 57 (3), Mar (2019) pp1636-1658
   
   • “Boost Your Retirement Savings With These Easy Tips” –The Street (March 9, 2018)
   • “Study Finds Two Biases That Hurt Americans’ Savings” – WBUR 90.9 (July 18, 2016)
   • “The Two Biases That Keep People From Saving Money” – The Atlantic (July 17, 2016)
   • “These 2 Behavioral Biases Could Mean Up to 70% Less in Retirement” ­­­– Think Advisor (April 7, 2016)
   • “Our Blind Spots Cut Retirement Savings” – Squared Away Blog (April 7, 2016)
   • “The Real Reasons Americans Aren’t Saving Enough for Retirement” – Money (August 20, 2015)
   • “How does your 401(k) contribution translate into retirement income?” – MarketWatch (September 18, 2015)
   • “2 Mental Roadblocks That Keep Us From Saving” – Next Avenue, PBS (September 8, 2015)– Forbes (September 9, 2015), reprinted
   • “The $24 Billion Workers Are Leaving on the Table: Why are employees passing up so much free 401(k) money” – PBS Next Avenue (May 11, 2015)

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10. Exponential‐growth Bias in Experimental Consumption Decisions with Matthew Levy
    Economica, Mar 2019

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11. Fantasy and Dread: The Demand for Information and the Consumption Utility of the Future with Ananda Ganguly
    Management Science, Vol. 63 (12), Dec (2017) pp 4037-4060
    
    • “The Ostrich Effect” – NPR Hidden Brain (September 18, 2017)
    • “Why We Think Ignorance is Bliss, Even When It Hurts Our Health” – NPR Morning Edition (July 28, 2014)
    • “When Health Ignorance is Bliss” – The Atlantic (October 21, 2014)

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12. When Higher Productivity Hurts: The Interaction Between Overconfidence and Capital with Andrew Royal
    Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics, Vol. 67, April 2017, pp 131-142

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13. Exponential-Growth Bias and Overconfidence with Matthew Levy
    Journal of Economic Psychology, (Lead Article) Vol. 58, Feb (2017), pp 1-14

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14. Misunderestimation: Exponential-Growth Bias and Time-Varying Returns with Matthew Levy
    Economics Bulletin, Vol. 36 (1) pp. 29-34

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15. Exponential-Growth Bias and Lifecycle Consumption with Matthew Levy
    Journal of the European Economic Association, (Lead Article), Vol 14(3), (2016)
    
    • “How Huge Returns Mess With Your Mind” – The Wall Street Journal (January 4, 2013)
    • “The Power of Pension Fees” – BBC Radio 4 (January 3, 2014)

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16. An Economic Framework of Microbial Trade with Harris Wang and Michael Mee
    PLOS ONE, July 29, 2015, 0(7): e0132907. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0132907
    
    • “Economics of Ail: How Bacteria Flourish” – Wall Street Journal, The Numbers Column (December 12, 2015)
    • “Economic Modelers Liken Microbial Communities to Countries Trading Goods” – Microbe (Current Topics Column) (Volume 10, Number 12, 2015)
    • “This Week in Microbiology #123: A Microbial MAGE” – Microbe World (March 11, 2016) Podcast, discusses our research at 1hr 3min
    • “The economics of microbial trade” – Marginal Revolution (Blog) (August 3, 2015)
    • “Your gut is a complex marketplace where microbes trade, study shows” –Techie News (August 3, 2015)
    • “Can economics help explain microbial life?” – Red Orbit (August 2, 2015)
    • “There may be a complex market living in your gut” – Science Daily (August 1, 2015)

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17. Everyone Believes in Redemption: Overoptimism and Nudges with Robert Letzler
    Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization, November 2014, 107A, 107-122, doi:10.1016/j.jebo.2014.08.011
    
    • “The Trick to Keeping New Year’s Resolutions” – Bloomberg (December 31, 2013)

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18. Placation and Provocation
    Rationality and Society, Feb 2014, 26(1), 73-104. doi:10.1177/1043463113513092

Forever Working Papers

The Effect of Contemporaneous Meat Consumption on Attitudes and Behaviors Towards Animal Welfare with Monica Capra, Xi Chen, Seong-Gyu Park, Jin Xu, Shanshan Zhang

A Model of Attention and Anticipation with Kristóf Madarász

Works in Progress

“What do people think about?” with Zhou Fang and Shanshan Zhang

“Optimized messaging shifts demand toward plant-based food” with Jacy Reese, and Laura Thomas-Walters