Bio
Stefano DellaVigna (Ph.D. 2002, Harvard) is the Daniel Koshland, Sr. Distinguished Professor of Economics and Professor of Business Administration at the University of California, Berkeley. He is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and of the Econometric Society, an Alfred P. Sloan Fellow (2008-2010), and a Distinguished Teaching Award winner (2008). He specializes in Behavioral Economics and has published in international journals such as the American Economic Review, the Journal of Political Economy, and the Quarterly Journal of Economics. He is currently the Chair of UC Berkeley Economics Department, and served as a co-editor of the American Economic Review, one of the leading journals in economics, from 2017 to 2023.
Highlights
Working Papers
(with Guido Imbens, Woojin Kim and David M. Ritzwoller)
April 2025
Abstract (click to expand): Empirical research in economics often examines the behavior of agents located in a geographic space. In such cases, statistical inference is complicated by the interdependence of economic outcomes across locations. A common approach to account for this dependence is to cluster standard errors based on a predefined geographic partition. A second strategy is to model dependence in terms of the distance between units. Dependence, however, does not necessarily stop at borders and is typically not determined by distance alone. This paper introduces a method that leverages observations of multiple outcomes to adjust standard errors for cross-sectional dependence. Specifically, a researcher, while interested in a particular outcome variable, often observes dozens of other variables for the same units. We show that these outcomes can be used to estimate dependence under the assumption that the cross-sectional correlation structure is shared across outcomes. We develop a procedure, which we call Thresholding Multiple Outcomes (TMO), that uses this estimate to adjust standard errors in a given regression setting. We show that adjustments of this form can lead to sizable reductions in the bias of standard errors in calibrated U.S. county-level regressions. Re-analyzing nine recent papers, we find that the proposed correction can make a substantial difference in practice.
(with David Card, Chenxi Jiang and Dmitry Taubinsky)
April 2024
Abstract (click to expand): Laboratory experiments find a robust relationship between decision times and perceived values of alternatives. This paper investigates how these findings translate to experts’ decision making and information acquisition in the field. In a stylized model of expert choice between two alternatives, we show that (i) less-commonly chosen alternatives are more likely to be chosen later than earlier; (ii) decision time is higher when the likelihood of choosing each alternative is closer to fifty percent; and (iii) the ultimate quality of the chosen alternative may increase or decrease with decision time, depending on whether earlier or later signals are more informative. We test these predictions in the editorial setting, where we observe proxies for paper quality and signals available to editors. We document that (i) the probability of a positive decision rises with decision time; (ii) average decision time is higher when our estimated probability of a positive decision is closer to fifty percent; and (iii) paper quality is positively (negatively) related to decision time for papers with Reject (R&R) decisions. Structural estimates show that the additional information acquired in editorial delays is modest, and has little impact on the quality of decisions.
Publications
(with Woojin Kim)
The Review of Economic Studies, forthcoming.
Abstract (click to expand): Economists have studied the impact of numerous state laws, from welfare rules to voting ID requirements. Yet for all this policy evaluation, what do we know about policy diffusion—how these policies are introduced and spread from state to state? We present a series of facts based on a data set of 602 U.S. state policies spanning the past 7 decades. First, proxies of state capacity do not predict a higher likelihood of innovating new policies, but the political leaning of the state does predict a higher likelihood of introducing partisan laws since 1990. Second, the diffusion of policies from 1950 to 2000 is best predicted by proximity—a state is more likely to adopt a policy if nearby states have already done so—as well as similarity in voter policy preferences. Third, since 2000, party alignment has become the strongest predictor of diffusion, and the speed of adoption has increased. Models of learning and correlated preferences can account for the earlier patterns, but the findings for the last two decades indicate a sharply increasing role of party control. We conclude that party polarization has emerged as a key factor recently for policy adoption, plausibly leading to a worse match between state policies and voter preferences.
(with Woojin Kim and Elizabeth Linos)
Journal of Political Economy, August 2024, Vol. 132, pp. 2748–2789.
Abstract (click to expand): Governments increasingly use RCTs to test innovations, yet we know little about how they incorporate results into policy-making. We study 30 U.S. cities that ran 73 RCTs with a national Nudge Unit. Cities adopt a nudge treatment into their communications in 27% of the cases. We find that the strength of the evidence and key city features do not strongly predict adoption; instead, the largest predictor is whether the RCT was implemented using pre-existing communication, as opposed to new communication. We identify organizational inertia as a leading explanation: changes to pre-existing infrastructure are more naturally folded into subsequent processes.
(with David Card, Patricia Funk and Nagore Iriberri)
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, January 2023, Vol. 120(4), e2212421120.
Abstract (click to expand): Historically, a large majority of newly elected members of the National Academy of Science (NAS) and the American Academy of Arts and Science (AAAS) were men. Within the past two decades, however, that situation has changed, and in the last 3 y, women made up about 40% of the new members in both academies. We build lists of active scholars from publications in the top journals in three fields—psychology, mathematics, and economics—and develop a series of models to compare changes in the probability of selection of women as members of the NAS and AAAS from the 1960s to today, controlling for publications and citations. In the early years of our sample, women were less likely to be selected as members than men with similar records. By the 1990s, the selection process at both academies was approximately gender neutral, conditional on publications and citations. In the past 20 y, however, a positive preference for female members has emerged and strengthened in all three fields. Currently, women are 3 to 15 times more likely to be selected as members of the AAAS and NAS than men with similar publication and citation records. The positive preference for women may be in part a reflection of concerns that women face higher barriers to publishing in top journals and may receive less credit for their work.
Online Appendix
(with Joerg Heining, Johannes F. Schmieder and Simon Trenkle)
Quarterly Journal of Economics, May 2022, Vol. 137, pp. 1181–1232.
Abstract (click to expand): The job finding rate of Unemployment Insurance (UI) recipients declines in the initial months of unemployment and then exhibits a spike at the benefit exhaustion point. A range of theoretical explanations have been proposed, but those are hard to disentangle using data on job finding alone. To better understand the underlying mechanisms, we conducted a large text-message-based survey of unemployed workers in Germany. We surveyed 6,349 UI recipients twice a week for 4 months about their job search effort. The panel structure allows us to observe how search effort evolves within individuals over the unemployment spell. We provide three key facts: 1) search effort is flat early on in the UI spell, 2) search effort exhibits an increase up to UI exhaustion and a decrease thereafter, 3) UI recipients do not appear to time job start dates to coincide with the UI exhaustion point. A standard search model with unobserved heterogeneity struggles to explain the second fact, and a model of storable offers is not consistent with the third fact. The patterns are well captured by a model of reference-dependent job search or by a model with duration dependence in search cost.
Online Appendix
(with John List, Ulrike Malmendier and Gautam Rao)
American Economic Review, March 2022, Vol. 112, pp. 1038–1074.
Abstract (click to expand): We design three field experiments to estimate how workers’ social preferences towards their employer motivates their work effort. We vary the pay rates offered to workers, the return to the employer, and employer generosity demonstrated via unexpected gifts. Workers exert effort even without private incentives, but their effort is insensitive to the return to the employer. This is consistent with ‘warm glow’ but not pure altruism. The gifts have no effect on productivity, but engender extra work. This difference is explained partly by the finding that extra work is much more responsive to incentives than is productivity.
Online Appendix
(with Devin Pope)
AEJ: Microeconomics, August 2022, Vol. 14(3), pp. 889–925.
Abstract (click to expand): How robust are experimental results to changes in design? And can researchers anticipate which changes matter most? We consider a real-effort task with multiple behavioral treatments, and examine the stability along six dimensions: (i) pure replication; (ii) demographics; (iii) geography and culture; (iv) the task; (v) the output measure; (vi) the presence of a consent form. We find near perfect replication of the experimental results, and full stability of the results across demographics, significantly higher than a group of experts expected. The results differ instead across task and output change, mostly because the task change adds noise to the findings.
Online Appendix
(with David Card, Patricia Funk and Nagore Iriberri)
Econometrica, September 2022, Vol. 90(5), pp. 1937–1971.
Abstract (click to expand): We study the selection of Fellows of the Econometric Society, using a new data set of publications and citations for over 40,000 actively publishing economists since the early 1900s. Conditional on achievement, we document a large negative gap in the probability that women were selected as Fellows in the 1933-1979 period. This gap became positive (though not statistically significant) from 1980 to 2010, and in the past decade has become large and highly significant, with over a 100% increase in the probability of selection for female authors relative to males with similar publications and citations. The positive boost affects highly qualified female candidates (in the top 10% of authors) with no effect for the bottom 90%. Using nomination data for the past 30 years, we find a key proximate role for the Society’s Nominating Committee in this shift. Since 2012 the Committee has had an explicit mandate to nominate highly qualified women, and its nominees enjoy above-average election success (controlling for achievement). Looking beyond gender, we document similar shifts in the premium for geographic diversity: in the mid-2000s, both the Fellows and the Nominating Committee became significantly more likely to nominate and elect candidates from outside the US. Finally, we examine gender gaps in several other major awards for US economists. We show that the gaps in the probability of selection of new fellows of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the National Academy of Sciences closely parallel those of the Econometric Society, with historically negative penalties for women turning to positive premiums in recent years.
(with Elizabeth Linos)
Econometrica, January 2022, Vol. 90(1), pp. 81–116.
Abstract (click to expand): Nudge interventions have quickly expanded from academic studies to larger implementation in so-called Nudge Units in governments. This provides an opportunity to compare interventions in research studies, versus at scale. We assemble a unique dataset of 126 RCTs covering 23 million individuals, including all trials run by two of the largest Nudge Units in the United States. We compare these trials to a sample of nudge trials in academic journals from two recent meta-analyses. In the Academic Journals papers, the average impact of a nudge is very large—an 8.7 percentage point take-up effect, which is a 33.4% increase over the average control. In the Nudge Units sample, the average impact is still sizable and highly statistically significant, but smaller at 1.4 percentage points, an 8.0% increase. We document three dimensions which can account for the difference between these two estimates: (i) statistical power of the trials; (ii) characteristics of the interventions, such as topic area and behavioral channel; and (iii) selective publication. A meta-analysis model incorporating these dimensions indicates that selective publication in the Academic Journals sample, exacerbated by low statistical power, explains about 70 percent of the difference in effect sizes between the two samples. Different nudge characteristics account for most of the residual difference
(with Nicholas Otis and Eva Vivalt)
AEA Papers and Proceedings, May 2020, Vol. 110, pp. 75–79.
Abstract (click to expand): Forecasts of experimental results can clarify the interpretation of research results, mitigate publication bias, and improve experimental designs. We collect forecasts of the results of three Registered Reports preliminarily accepted to the Journal of Development Economics, randomly varying four features: (1) small versus large reference values; (2) whether predictions are in raw units or standard deviations; (3) text-entry versus slider responses; and (4) small versus large slider bounds. Forecasts are generally robust to elicitation features, though wider slider bounds are associated with higher forecasts throughout the forecast distribution. We make preliminary recommendations on how many forecasts should be gathered.
(with David Card)
Review of Economics and Statistics, March 2020, Vol. 102(2), pp. 195–217.
Abstract (click to expand): We study editorial decisions using anonymized submissions at four leading economics journals: the Journal of the European Economic Association, the Quarterly Journal of Economics, the Review of Economic Studies, and the Review of Economics and Statistics. We match papers to the publication records of authors and referees at the time of submission and to subsequent Google Scholar citations. To guide our analysis, we develop a benchmark model in which editors maximize the expected quality of accepted papers and citations are unbiased measures of quality. We then generalize the model to allow different quality thresholds for different papers, systematic gaps between citations and quality, and a direct impact of publication on citations. Empirically we find that referee recommendations are strong predictors of citations, and that editors follow these recommendations quite closely. We document two main deviations from a citation-maximizing benchmark. First, papers by highly-published authors get more citations, conditional on the referees’ recommendations, suggesting that referees set a higher bar for these authors or that prolific authors are over-cited conditional on quality. Editors’ decisions at the desk-reject and revise-and-resubmit stage show a similar pattern. Second, recommendations of highly-published referees are no more predictive of future citations, yet editors give their views significantly more weight. To help interpret these findings we collect two additional pieces of evidence. We conduct a survey asking field specialists to assess the relative quality of matched papers by more and less prolific authors; our respondents do not appear to believe that prolific authors are over-cited. We also elicit forecasts of the informativeness of referees from a sample of editors and other economists. Both groups believe that highly-published referees are more informative, potentially explaining the extra weight they receive in editors’ decisions.
(with David Card, Patricia Funk, Nagore Irriberri)
Quarterly Journal of Economics, February 2020, Vol. 135(1), pp. 269–327.
Abstract (click to expand): We study the role of gender in the evaluation of economic research using submissions to four leading journals. We find that referee gender has no effect on the relative assessment of female- versus male-authored papers, suggesting that any differential biases of male referees are negligible. To determine whether referees as a whole impose different standards for female authors, we compare citations for female and male-authored papers, holding constant referee evaluations and other characteristics. We find that female-authored papers receive about 25% more citations than observably similar male-authored papers. Editors largely follow the referees, resulting in a 1.7 percentage point lower probability of a revise and resubmit verdict for papers with female authors relative to a citation-maximizing benchmark. In their desk rejection decisions, editors treat female authors more favorably, though they still impose a higher bar than would be implied by citation-maximization. We find no differences in the informativeness of female versus male referees, or in the weight that editors place on the recommendations of female versus male referees. We also find no differences in editorial delays for female versus male-authored papers.
Online Appendix
(with Matthew Gentzkow)
Quarterly Journal of Economics, November 2019, Vol. 134(4), pp. 2011–2084.
Abstract (click to expand): We show that most US food, drugstore, and mass merchandise chains charge nearly-uniform prices across stores, despite wide variation in consumer demographics and competition. Demand estimates reveal substantial within-chain variation in price elasticities and suggest that the median chain sacrifices $16m of annual profit relative to a benchmark of optimal prices. In contrast, differences in average prices between chains are broadly consistent with the optimal benchmark. We discuss a range of explanations for nearly-uniform pricing, highlighting managerial inertia and brand-image concerns as mechanisms frequently mentioned by industry participants. Relative to our optimal benchmark, uniform pricing may significantly increase the prices paid by poorer households relative to the rich, dampen the response of prices to local economic shocks, alter the analysis of mergers in antitrust, and shift the incidence of intra-national trade costs.
Online Appendix
(with Devin Pope and Eva Vivalt)
Science, October 25 2019, Vol. 366, pp. 428–429.
Abstract (click to expand): Many fields of research, such as economics, psychology, political science, and medicine, have seen growing interest in new research designs to improve the rigor and credibility of research (e.g., natural experiments, lab experiments, and randomized controlled trials). Interest has similarly grown in efforts to increase transparency, such as preregistration of hypotheses and methods, that seek to allay concerns that improved research designs do not address per se, such as publication bias and p-hacking. Yet, although these efforts improve the informativeness and interpretation of research results, relatively little attention has been paid to another practice that could help to achieve this goal: relating research findings to the views of the scientific community, policy-makers, and the general public. We suggest below three broad ways in which systematic collection of predictions of research results will prove useful: by improving the interpretation of research results, mitigating bias against null results, and improving predictive accuracy and experimental design.
(with Devin Pope)
Journal of Political Economy, December 2018, Vol. 126(6), pp. 2410–2456.
Abstract (click to expand): We analyze how 208 academic experts forecast the results of 15 treatments involving monetary and non-monetary motivators in a real-effort task. We compare these forecasts to those made by PhD students and non-experts: undergraduates, MBAs, and an online sample. We document seven main results. First, the average forecast of experts predicts quite well the experimental results. Second, there is a strong wisdom-of-crowds effect: the average forecast outperforms 96 percent of individual forecasts. Third, citations, academic rank, field, and contextual experience do not correlate with accuracy. Fourth, experts as a group do better than non-experts, but not if accuracy is defined as rank ordering treatments. Fifth, measures of effort, confidence, and revealed ability are predictive of forecast accuracy to some extent, especially for non-experts. Sixth, using these measures we can identify ‘superforecasters’ among the non-experts who outperform the experts out of sample. Seventh, these results on forecasting accuracy surprise the forecasters themselves. We present and estimate a simple model that organizes our findings.
Online Appendix
Handbook of Behavioral Economics, October 2018, Vol. 1, pp. 613–723.
Abstract (click to expand): What is the role of structural estimation in behavioral economics? I discuss advantages, and limitations, of the work in Structural Behavioral Economics. I also cover common modeling choices and how to get started. Among the advantages, I argue that structural estimation builds on, and expands, a classical behavioral tool, simple calibrations, and that it benefits from the presence of a few parsimonious behavioral models which can be taken to the data. Estimation is also well suited for experimental work, common in behavioral economics, as it can lead to improvements in the experimental design. In addition, at a time where policy implications of behavioral work are increasingly discussed, it is important to ground these policy implications in (estimated) models. Structural work, however, has important limitations, which are relevant to its behavioral applications. Estimation takes much longer and the extra degree of complexity can make it difficult to know which of a series of assumptions is driving the results. For related reasons, it is also easy to over-reach with the welfare implications. Taking this into account, I provide a partial how-to guide to structural behavioral economics, covering: (i) the choice of estimation method; (ii) the modeling of heterogeneity; (iii) identification and sensitivity. Finally, I discuss common issues for the estimation of leading behavioral models. I illustrate this discussion with selected coverage of existing work in the literature.
(with Devin Pope)
Review of Economic Studies, April 2018, Vol. 85, pp. 1029–1069.
Abstract (click to expand): How much do different monetary and non-monetary motivators induce costly effort? Does the effectiveness line up with the expectations of researchers and with results in the literature? We conduct a large-scale real-effort experiment with 18 treatment arms. We examine the effect of (i) standard incentives; (ii) behavioral factors like social preferences and reference dependence; and (iii) non-monetary inducements from psychology. We find that (i) monetary incentives work largely as expected, including a very low piece rate treatment which does not crowd out effort; (ii) the evidence is partly consistent with standard behavioral models, including warm glow, though we do not find evidence of probability weighting; (iii) the psychological motivators are effective, but less so than incentives. We then compare the results to forecasts by 208 academic experts. On average, the experts anticipate several key features, like the effectiveness of psychological motivators. A sizeable share of experts, however, expects crowd-out, probability weighting, and pure altruism, counterfactually. As a further comparison, we present a meta-analysis of similar treatments in the literature. Overall, predictions based on the literature are correlated with, but underperform, the expert forecasts.
Online Appendix
(with Attila Lindner, Balazs Reizer and Johannes F. Schmieder)
Quarterly Journal of Economics, November 2017, Vol. 132(4), pp. 1969–2018.
Abstract (click to expand): We propose a model of job search with reference-dependent preferences, with loss aversion relative to recent income (the reference point). In this model, newly unemployed individuals search hard since consumption is below their reference point. Over time, though, they get used to lower income, and thus reduce their search effort. In anticipation of a benefit cut their search effort rises again, then declines once they get accustomed to the lower post-cut benefit level. The model fits the typical pattern of exit from unemployment, even with no unobserved heterogeneity. To distinguish between this and other models, we use a unique reform in the UI benefit path. In 2005, Hungary switched from a single-step UI system to a two-step system, with overall generosity unchanged. The system generated increased hazard rates in anticipation of, and especially following, benefit cuts in ways the standard model has a hard time explaining. We estimate a model with optimal consumption, endogenous search effort, and unobserved heterogeneity. The reference-dependent model fits the hazard rates substantially better than plausible versions of the standard model, including habit formation. Our estimates indicate a slow-adjusting reference point and substantial impatience, likely reflecting present-bias.
Online Appendix
(with Johannes Hermle)
Review of Economic Studies, October 2017, Vol. 84(4), pp. 1510–1550.
Abstract (click to expand): Media outlets are increasingly owned by conglomerates, inducing a conflict of interest: a media outlet can bias its coverage to benefit companies in the same group. We test for bias by examining movie reviews in media outlets owned by News Corp, such as the Wall Street Journal, and Time Warner, such as Time. We find higher ratings for 20th Century Fox movies in News Corp. outlets compared to movies by other studios. To disentangle bias from correlation of taste, we introduce and validate a novel matching procedure using individual movie ratings from online platforms. Using this procedure, we find no evidence of bias in News Corp. nor Time Warner outlets. We reject even small effects, such as bias of one extra star (out of four) every 13 movies. We test for differential bias when the return to bias is plausibly higher, examine bias by media outlet and by journalist, as well as editorial bias. We also consider bias by omission–whether media outlets are more likely to review highly-rated movies by affiliated studios–and conflict of interest within a movie aggregator. In none of these dimensions do we find evidence of bias. We relate to previous work and discuss three explanations for the lack of bias in our setting: high values of media reputation, organizational features in a conglomerate, and low returns to bias.
(with John List, Ulrike Malmendier and Gautam Rao)
Review of Economic Studies, January 2017, Vol. 84(1), pp. 143–181.
Abstract (click to expand): Why do people vote? We design a field experiment to estimate a model of voting ‘because others will ask’. The expectation of being asked motivates turnout if individuals derive pride from telling others that they voted, or feel shame from admitting that they did not vote, provided that lying is costly. In a door-to-door survey about election turnout, we experimentally vary (i) the informational content and use of a flyer pre-announcing the survey, (ii) the duration and payment for the survey, and (iii) the incentives to lie about past voting. The experimental results indicate significant social image concerns. For the 2010 Congressional election, we estimate a value of voting ‘to tell others’ of about $15, contributing 2 percentage points to turnout. Lastly, we evaluate a get-out-the-vote intervention in which we tell potential voters that we will ask if they voted.
(with Ruben Durante, Brian Knight and Eliana La Ferrara)
AEJ: Applied Economics, January 2016, Vol. 8(1), pp. 224–256.
Abstract (click to expand): We analyze a novel lobbying channel: firms attempting to influence businessmenpoliticians through business proxies. In particular, when a politician controls a business, firms shift their spending towards the politician’s business in the hopes of securing favorable regulation. We investigate this channel in Italy where government officials are not required to divest business holdings. We examine the evolution of advertising spending by firms between 1993 and 2009, a period in which Silvio Berlusconi was prime minister three separate times, while maintaining control of Italy’s major private television network, Mediaset. We develop a theoretical model of this channel and, in the context of this model, hypothesize that firms shift their advertising budget towards Mediaset when Berlusconi is in power and that this shift is particularly pronounced for regulated firms. Consistent with these hypotheses, we document a significant pro-Mediaset bias in the allocation of advertising spending during Berlusconi’s political tenure, and this pattern is especially pronounced for companies operating in more regulated sectors. Using these estimates, we estimate that Mediaset profits increased by one billion euros during this period and that regulated firms anticipated sizeable returns, stressing the economic importance of this lobbying channel. These findings provide an additional rationale for rules on conflict of interest.
(with Eliana La Ferrara)
Handbook of Media Economics, December 2015, Vol. 1, pp. 723–768.
Abstract (click to expand): In this survey, we review the literature on the impact of exposure to the media. We cast a wide net and cover media impacts on education, family choices, labor and migration decisions, environmental choices, health, crime, public economics, attitudes, consumption and savings, and development economics. We stress five themes. First, the demand for entertainment plays a key role, with the economic impacts emerging largely as by-products. Second, to understand the media effects one cannot just focus on the direct effect of exposure but one needs to take into account the crowding-out of alternative activities (substitution effect). Third, the sources of identification play a critical role in determining what is known: credible estimates of short- and long run effects are available for some topics and some media but not for others. Fourth, most of the evidence on social and economic impacts is for exposure to the entertainment media such as television, as opposed to the printed press. Fifth, for the policy impacts both the substitution effect of media exposure and the demand for entertainment play an important role.
(with David Card)
Journal of Economic Perspectives, Summer 2014, Vol. 28(3), pp. 149–168.
(with Ruben Enikolopov, Vera Mironova, Maria Petrova and Ekaterina Zhuravskaya)
AEJ: Applied Economics, July 2014, Vol. 6, pp. 103-132.
Abstract (click to expand): How do nationalistic media affect animosity between ethnic groups? We consider one of Europe’s deadliest conflicts since WWII: the Serbo-Croatian conflict. We show that, after a decade of peace, cross-border nationalistic Serbian radio triggers ethnic hatred towards Serbs in Croatia. Mostly attracted by non-political content, many Croats listen to Serbian public radio (intended for Serbs in Serbia) whenever signal is available. As a result, the vote for extreme nationalist parties is higher, and ethnically offensive graffiti are more common, in Croatian villages with Serbian radio reception. A laboratory experiment confirms that Serbian radio exposure causes anti-Serbian sentiment among Croats.
Online Appendix
(with John A. List, Ulrike Malmendier, and Gautam Rao)
American Economic Review Papers and Proceedings, May 2013, Vol. 103(3), pp. 586–590.
Abstract (click to expand): Do men and women have different social preferences? Previous findings are contradictory. We provide a potential explanation using evidence from a field experiment. In a door-to-door solicitation, men and women are equally generous, but women become less generous when it becomes easy to avoid the solicitor. Our structural estimates of the social preference parameters suggest an explanation: women are more likely to be on the margin of giving, partly because of a less dispersed distribution of altruism. We find similar results for the willingness to complete an unpaid survey: women are more likely to be on the margin of participation.
Online Appendix
(with David Card)
Journal of Economic Literature, March 2013, Vol. 51(1), pp. 144–161.
Abstract (click to expand): How has publishing in top economics journals changed since 1970? Using a data set that combines information on all articles published in the top-five journals from 1970 to 2012 with their Google Scholar citations, we identify nine key trends. First, annual submissions to the top-five journals nearly doubled from 1990 to 2012. Second, the total number of articles published in these journals actually declined from 400 per year in the late 1970s to 300 per year most recently. As a result, the acceptance rate has fallen from 15 percent to 6 percent, with potential implications for the career progression of young scholars. Third, one journal, the American Economic Review, now accounts for 40 percent of top-five publications, up from 25 percent in the 1970s. Fourth, recently published papers are on average three times longer than they were in the 1970s, contributing to the relative shortage of journal space. Fifth, the number of authors per paper has increased from 1.3 in 1970 to 2.3 in 2012, partly offsetting the fall in the number of articles per year. Sixth, citations for top-five publications are high: among papers published in the late 1990s, the median number of Google Scholar citations is 200. Seventh, the ranking of journals by citations has remained relatively stable, with the notable exception of the Quarterly Journal of Economics, which climbed from fourth place to first place over the past three decades. Eighth, citation counts are significantly higher for longer papers and those written by more coauthors. Ninth, although the fraction of articles from different fields published in the top five has remained relatively stable, there are important cohort trends in the citations received by papers from different fields, with rising citations to more recent papers in Development and International, and declining citations to recent papers in Econometrics and Theory.
Online Appendix
Update to "Nine Facts about Top Journals in Economics" (4/2018)
(with John A. List and Ulrike Malmendier)
Quarterly Journal of Economics, February 2012, Vol. 127, pp. 1-56
Abstract (click to expand): Every year, 90% of Americans give money to charities. Is such generosity necessarily welfare enhancing for the giver? We present a theoretical framework that distinguishes two types of motivation: individuals like to give, for example, due to altruism or warm glow, and individuals would rather not give but dislike sayingno, forexample, duetosocial pressure. Wedesigna door-to-doorfund-raiser in which some households are informed about the exact time of solicitation with a flyer on their doorknobs. Thus, they can seek or avoid the fund-raiser. We find that the flyer reduces the share of households opening the door by 9% to 25% and, if the flyer allows checking a Do Not Disturb box, reduces giving by 28% to 42%. The latter decrease is concentrated among donations smaller than $10. These findings suggest that social pressure is an important determinant of doorto-door giving. Combining data from this and a complementary field experiment, we structurally estimate the model. The estimated social pressure cost of saying notoa solicitoris $3.80 foranin-statecharityand$1.40 foranout-of-statecharity. Our welfare calculations suggest that our door-to-door fund-raising campaigns on average lower the utility of the potential donors.
Online Appendix
Data
(with David Card and Ulrike Malmendier)
Journal of Economic Perspectives, Summer 2011, Vol. 25(3), pp. 39–62.
Data
(with Joshua Pollet)
Journal of Finance, February 2013, Vol. 68(1), pp. 237–270.
Abstract (click to expand): Using demand shifts induced by demographics, we evaluate capital budgeting and market timing. Capital budgeting implies that industries anticipating positive demand shifts in the near future should issue more equity to finance greater capacity. To the extent that demographic shifts in the distant future are not incorporated into equity prices, market timing implies that industries anticipating positive demand shifts in the distant future should issue less equity due to undervaluation. The evidence supports both theories: new listings and equity issuance respond positively to demand shifts during the next five years and negatively to demand shifts further in the future.
Online Appendix
(with Matthew Gentzkow)
Annual Review of Economics, September 2010, Vol. 2, pp. 643–669.
Abstract (click to expand): We provide a selective survey of empirical evidence on the effects as well as the drivers of persuasive communication. We consider persuasion directed at consumers, voters, donors, and investors. We organize our review around four questions. First, to what extent does persuasion affect the behavior of each of these groups? Second, what models best capture the response to persuasive communication? Third, what are persuaders’ incentives, and what limits their ability to distort communications? Finally, what evidence exists on the way persuasion affects equilibrium outcomes in economics and politics?
(with Eliana La Ferrara)
AEJ: Economic Policy, November 2010, Vol. 2(4), pp. 26–57.
Abstract (click to expand): We propose a method to detect illegal arms trade based on investor knowledge. We focus on countries under arms embargo and identify events that suddenly increase or decrease conflict intensity. If a weapon-making company is trading illegally, an event that increases the demand for arms may increase stock prices. We find positive event returns for companies headquartered in countries with high corruption and low transparency in arms trade. We also suggest a method to detect potential embargo violations based on chains of reactions by individual stocks. The presumed violations positively correlate with the number of UN investigations and Internet stories.
Data
(with Janet Currie, Enrico Moretti and Vikram Pathania)
AEJ: Economic Policy, August 2010, Vol. 2(3), pp. 32–63.
Abstract (click to expand): We investigate how changes in the supply of fast food restaurants affect weight outcomes of 3 million children and 3 million pregnant women. Among ninth graders, a fast food restaurant within 0.1 miles of a school results in a 5.2 percent increase in obesity rates. Among pregnant women, a fast-food restaurant within 0.5 miles of residence results in a 1.6 percent increase in the probability of gaining over 20 kilos. The implied effects on caloric intake are one order of magnitude larger for children than for mothers, consistent with smaller travel cost for adults. Non-fast food restaurants and future fast-food restaurants are uncorrelated with weight outcomes.
Journal of Economic Literature, June 2009, Vol. 47(2), pp. 315–372.
Abstract (click to expand): The research in Psychology and Economics (a.k.a. Behavioral Economics) suggests that individuals deviate from the standard model in three respects: (1) nonstandard preferences, (2) nonstandard beliefs, and (3) nonstandard decision making. In this paper, I survey the empirical evidence from the field on these three classes of deviations. The evidence covers a number of applications, from consumption to finance, from crime to voting, from charitable giving to labor supply. In the class of nonstandard preferences, I discuss time preferences (self-control problems), risk preferences (reference dependence), and social preferences. On nonstandard beliefs, I present evidence on overconfidence, on the law of small numbers, and on projection bias. Regarding nonstandard decision making, I cover framing, limited attention, menu effects, persuasion and social pressure, and emotions. I also present evidence on how rational actors—firms, employers, CEOs, investors, and politicians—respond to the nonstandard behavior described in the survey. Finally, I briefly discuss under what conditions experience and market interactions limit the impact of the nonstandard features.
Older Version
(with Gordon Dahl)
Quarterly Journal of Economics, May 2009, Vol. 124(2), pp. 677–734.
Abstract (click to expand): Laboratory experiments in psychology find that media violence increases aggression in the short run. We analyze whether media violence affects violent crime in the field. We exploit variation in the violence of blockbuster movies from 1995 to 2004, and study the effect on same-day assaults. We find that violent crime decreases on days with larger theater audiences for violent movies. The effect is partly due to voluntary incapacitation: between 6 P.M. and 12 A.M., a one million increase in the audience for violent movies reduces violent crime by 1.1% to 1.3%. After exposure to the movie, between 12 A.M. and 6 A.M., violent crime is reduced by an even larger percent. This finding is explained by the self-selection of violent individuals into violent movie attendance, leading to a substitution away from more volatile activities. In particular, movie attendance appears to reduce alcohol consumption. The results emphasize that media exposure affects behavior not only via content, but also because it changes time spent in alternative activities. The substitution away from more dangerous activities in the field can explain the differences with the laboratory findings. Our estimates suggest that in the short run, violent movies deter almost 1,000 assaults on an average weekend. Although our design does not allow us to estimate long-run effects, we find no evidence of medium-run effects up to three weeks after initial exposure
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(with Joshua Pollet)
Journal of Finance, April 2009, Vol. 64(2), pp. 709–749.
Abstract (click to expand): Does limited attention among investors affect stock returns? We compare the response to earnings announcements on Friday, when investor inattention is more likely, to the response on other weekdays. If inattention influences stock prices, we should observe less immediate response and more drift for Friday announcements. Indeed, Friday announcements have a 15% lower immediate response and a 70% higher delayed response. A portfolio investing in differential Friday drift earns substantial abnormal returns. In addition, trading volume is 8% lower around Friday announcements. These findings support explanations of post-earnings announcement drift based on underreaction to information caused by limited attention
[Data on accuracy of earnings announcement dates]
(with Joshua Pollet)
American Economic Review, December 2007, Vol. 97(5), pp. 1667–1702.
Abstract (click to expand): How do investors respond to predictable shifts in profitability? We consider how demographic shifts affect profits and returns across industries. Cohort size fluctuations produce forecastable demand changes for age-sensitive sectors, such as toys, bicycles, beer, life insurance, and nursing homes. These demand changes are predictable once a specific cohort is born. We use lagged consumption and demographic data to forecast future consumption demand growth induced by changes in age structure. We find that demand forecasts predict profitability by industry. Moreover, forecast demand changes five to ten years in the future predict annual industry stock returns. One additional percentage point of annualized demand growth due to demographics predicts a 5 to 10 percentage point increase in annual abnormal industry stock returns. However, forecasted demand changes over shorter horizons do not predict stock returns. A trading strategy exploiting demographic information earns an annualized risk-adjusted return of approximately 6 percent. We present a model of inattention to information about the distant future that is consistent with the findings. We also discuss alternative explanations, including omitted risk-based factors.
(with Ethan Kaplan)
Quarterly Journal of Economics, August 2007, Vol. 122(3), pp. 1187–1234.
Abstract (click to expand): Does media bias affect voting? We analyze the entry of Fox News in cable markets and its impact on voting. Between October 1996 and November 2000, the conservative Fox News Channel was introduced in the cable programming of 20 percent of U. S. towns. Fox News availability in 2000 appears to be largely idiosyncratic, conditional on a set of controls. Using a data set of voting data for 9,256 towns, we investigate if Republicans gained vote share in towns where Fox News entered the cable market by the year 2000. We find a significant effect of the introduction of Fox News on the vote share in Presidential elections between 1996 and 2000. Republicans gained 0.4 to 0.7 percentage points in the towns that broadcast Fox News. Fox News also affected voter turnout and the Republican vote share in the Senate. Our estimates imply that Fox News convinced 3 to 28 percent of its viewers to vote Republican, depending on the audience measure. The Fox News effect could be a temporary learning effect for rational voters, or a permanent effect for nonrational voters subject to persuasion.
Data
(with Ethan Kaplan)
Fact Finder, Fact Filter: How media reporting affects public policy, Roumeen Islam, Ed. World Bank Publications, forthcoming.
(with Ulrike Malmendier)
American Economic Review, June 2006, Vol. 96(3), pp. 694–719.
Abstract (click to expand): How do consumers choose from a menu of contracts? We analyze a novel dataset from three U.S. health clubs with information on both the contractual choice and the day-to-day attendance decisions of 7,752 members over three years. The observed consumer behavior is difficult to reconcile with standard preferences and beliefs. First, members who choose a contract with a flat monthly fee of over $70 attend on average 4.3 times per month. They pay a price per expected visit of more than $17, even though they could pay $10 per visit using a 10-visit pass. On average, these users forgo savings of $600 during their membership. Second, consumers who choose a monthly contract are 17 percent more likely to stay enrolled beyond one year than users committing for a year. This is surprising because monthly members pay higher fees for the option to cancel each month. We also document cancellation delays and attendance expectations, among other findings. Leading explanations for our findings are overconfidence about future self-control or about future efficiency. Overconfident agents overestimate attendance as well as the cancellation probability of automatically renewed contracts. Our results suggest that making inferences from observed contract choice under the rational expectation hypothesis can lead to biases in the estimation of consumer preferences.
Data
Self-Control in the Market: Evidence from the Health Club Industry
(with Ulrike Malmendier)
Quarterly Journal of Economics, May 2004, Vol. 119(2), pp. 353–402.
Abstract (click to expand): How do rational firms respond to consumer biases? In this paper we analyze the profit-maximizing contract design of firms if consumers have time-inconsistent preferences and are partially naive about it. We consider markets for two types of goods: goods with immediate costs and delayed benefits (investment goods) such as health club attendance, and goods with immediate benefits and delayed costs (leisure goods) such as credit card-financed consumption. We establish three features of the profit-maximizing contract design with partially naive time-inconsistent consumers. First, firms price investment goods below marginal cost. Second, firms price leisure goods above marginal cost. Third, for all types of goods firms introduce switching costs and charge back-loaded fees. The contractual design targets consumer misperception of future consumption and underestimation of the renewal probability. The predictions of the theory match the empirical contract design in the credit card, gambling, health club, life insurance, mail order, mobile phone, and vacation time-sharing industries. We also show that time inconsistency has adverse effects on consumer welfare only if consumers are naive.
(with M. Daniele Paserman)
Journal of Labor Economics, July 2005, Vol. 23(3), pp. 527–588.
Abstract (click to expand): Workers who are more impatient search less intensively and set lower reservation wages. The effect of impatience on exit rates from unemployment is therefore unclear. If agents have exponential time preferences, the reservation wage effect dominates for sufficiently patient individuals, so increases in impatience lead to higher exit rates. The opposite is true for agents with hyperbolic time preferences. Using two large longitudinal data sets, we find that impatience measures are negatively correlated with search effort and the unemployment exit rate and are orthogonal to reservation wages. Impatience substantially affects outcomes in the direction predicted by the hyperbolic model.
(with Marco LiCalzi)
Mathematical Social Sciences, January 2001, Vol. 41(1), pp. 19–37.
Abstract (click to expand): Given their reference point, most people tend to be risk averse over gains and risk seeking over losses. Therefore, they exhibit a dual risk attitude which is reference dependent. This paper considers an adaptive process for choice under risk such that, in spite of a permanent short-run dual risk attitude, the agent eventually learns to make risk neutral choices. The adaptive process is based on an aspiration level, endogenously adjusted over time in the direction of the actually experienced payof
Older Papers
July 2010
Abstract (click to expand): Racial differences in economic outcomes are wide-spread and persistent. Theories of statistical discrimination and of identity, but not of taste-based discrimination, posit that these differences are the effect of perceptions–of skills and of identity. Whether racial outcomes respond to change in racial perceptions, therefore, can shed some evidence on the nature of the observed racial differences. In this paper, I study the impact of an event that has plausibly changed the perceptions of what African Americans can achieve: Barack Obama’s election. I use an event study methodology and focus on key election events, such as the first primary victory (Jan. ‘08), the convention (Aug. ‘08), the general election (Nov. ‘08) and the inauguration (Jan. ‘09). I consider first the impact on a measure of discrimination, racial bias in traffic stops. I find evidence of discrimination against Blacks, but the extent of discrimination does not change with the Obama events. I then consider the impact on crime rates, labor force participation, applications to Law School, contribution to public goods (measured by organ donations), and time spent in investment activities. Across these outcomes, the Obama election events did not have an immediate impact for Blacks compared to Whites, with the possible exception of Law School applications. While the Obama election could change beliefs over the long term, in the short-term it does not appear to have changed behavior.
