Research
My main interest is in experimental economics. My recent research has focused on using experimental methods to explore discrimination in the labor market, the evolution of cooperation in society and social learning. I am currently working on two field experiments: one explores the effects of social interactions on consumption, financial and healthcare decisions and is funded in part by the Center for Retirement Research at Boston College and the National Science Foundation; the second experiment investigates the evolution of trust using a modified micro lending framework in a Peruvian Shantytown and is funded by the Russell Sage Foundation and its special initiative on the role of trust in society and the National Science Foundation.
Experimental Labor Economics
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"Why Beauty Matters,'' (with Markus Mobius), June 2005, American Economic Review, March 2006. (experimental instructions) |
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"Gender Differences in Incorporating Performance Fedback" (with Markus Mobius, Muriel Niederle and Paul Niehaus), February 2007, Slides February 2007 |
| "Dictator Games with Cheap Talk and Visual Interactions,'' June 2001, substantially extended and revised September 2004. |
Social Networks
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"Community Size and Network Closure,'' (with Hunt Allcott, Dean Karlan, Markus Mobius and Adam Szeidl) March 2007, American Economic Review, Papers and Proceedings, May 2007. |
Program to Visualize/Calculate Trust Flow
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How Much is A Friend Worth? Directed Altruism and Enforced Reciprocity in Social Networks: with Stephen Leider, Markus Mobius and Quoc-Anh Do, July 2007, Federal Reserve Bank of Boston Working Paper 07-11 (previous March 2007 version was published as NBER Working Paper W13135, earlier October 2004 version circulated under the title Social Capital in Social Networks) (experimental instructions) |
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"Social Networks and Consumer Demand" (with Markus Mobius and Paul Niehaus), November 2005 |
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"Measuring Trust in Peruvian Shantytowns" (with Dean Karlan and Markus Mobius), September 2005 |
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"Social Networks and Vaccination Decisions" (with Neel Rao and Markus Mobius), November 2007 |
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"Getting Closer or Drifting Apart?,'' (with Markus Mobius) June 2004, Quarterly Journal of Economics, August 2004. |
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"Formation of Social Capital: An Experiment," December 2002 |
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"The Process of Ghetto Formation: Evidence from Chicago", (with Markus Mobius) December 2001, further individual-level data |
Game Theory
| ''Sequential Move Games with Information Costs,'' August 2005. |
Macroeconomics
| ''On the Transition between Monetary Regimes,'' (with Markus Mobius), July 2001. |
Classroom Experiments
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Double Marginalization - This experiment illustrates the double
marginalization problem and how vertical integration solves it (joint with
Narine Badasyan, Jacob Goeree, Monica Hartmann, Charles Holt, John Morgan, Maros
Servatka and Dirk Yandell).
February 2005 |
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Ricardian Explorer - Experimental software for international trade courses (joint with Alberto Isgut, Ganesan Ravishanker, and Mike Roy). "The basics of International Trade - A Classroom Experiment" April 2005 |