About
I am a behavioral economist with a focus on political economy, working mainly with experiments alongside survey and observational data. Much of my work centers on beliefs about people - what others believe about us, and what we believe about ourselves - and on what these beliefs do to economic and political behavior.
I expect to complete my PhD in January 2027.
Working papers
- Respect-Based Reciprocity Job Market Paper Draft available soon.
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News Norms
Draft (PDF)
Abstract
Collective choices such as democratic decision-making run on attention, but attention to public affairs is often socially valuable and privately costly. This paper studies news norms, social expectations that “a good citizen stays informed”, and shows how they raise demand for political information through social image. In a pre-registered experiment, making political knowledge observable to peers increases willingness to pay for political news by about 21%. The effect is larger when participants believe their audience cares about being informed and can evaluate knowledge. Cross-national survey evidence shows that news norms are widely perceived and display systematic socioeconomic gradients. Together, the results identify a mechanism through which social environments can increase political information acquisition and contribute to persistent inequalities in political knowledge and political voice.
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Meritocratic Hubris? (Over)-Confidence and Fairness Views
Draft (PDF) ·
Harvard CID overview
Abstract
Feedback and evaluations shape modern life and are increasingly inflated across educational, professional, and digital systems. We hypothesize that inflated feedback, by boosting confidence, shifts fairness perceptions toward greater acceptance of inequality, even absent any material stake. In a preregistered online experiment with a US-representative sample, we subtly inflate performance feedback for identical test performances, which raises both overestimation and overplacement. Acting as impartial spectators, treated participants redistribute significantly less to lower-performing workers, reducing the extent of redistribution by about 14%. The effect is strongest among those who attribute performance to skill and effort, and text analysis points to motivated attention to performance as the operative channel.