"Soldiers and Rebels. Coups and Civil Wars in Weakly-Institutionalized and Fragmented States" Abstract Many ethnically divided societies are ridden with inter-ethnic conflicts which inhibit their economic development. Following Lijphart, many scholars have advocated the adoption of "consensual" political institutions to facilitate the peaceful resolutions of ethnic conflicts. In this paper, we argue that making institutions…

"Ambiguity in the small and in the large" Abstract This paper considers local and global multiple-prior representations of ambiguity for preferences that are (i) monotonic, (ii) Bernoullian, i.e. admit an affine utility representation when restricted to constant acts, and (iii) locally Lipschitz continuous. We do not require either Certainty Independence or Uncertainty Aversion. We show…

"Reciprocity or strategy? An analysis of motivation behind conditional cooperation" abstract The goal of this research is the understanding of the dynamics that lead to the rise of motivation to cooperate under limited information about what other people involved are doing. This research is a part of a broader project that analyses motivation for adopting pro-environmental behaviour: climate change is…

"Two-sided reputation in certification markets" Abstract We consider a market where a seller needs to resort to a certifier to overcome adverse selection. There is uncertainty about the certifier'spreferences for disclosing negative information about the seller. The profit of a monopolistic certifier is an inverted U-shaped function of his reputation for transparency: being perceived as more transparent allows him…

"Mother or market care? A structural estimation of child care impacts on child development"

"Calamity, Aid and Indirect Reciprocity: the Long Run Impact of Tsunami"

"Measuring Welfare: Random Scale Models for capabilities. An application to freedom of movement of Italian women." (Note: the seminar is on Thursday) abstract Sen’s capability approach distinguishes between what people are free to do and to be (their ‘capabilities’) and what they do and who they are (their ‘functionings’). In the capability approach, individuals’ well-being…

"Optimal Criminal Behavior and the Disutility of Jail: Theory and Evidence On Bank Robberies" abstract Based on unique data on individual bank robberies, this paper estimates the distribution of criminals' disutility of jail. The identification rests on the money versus risk trade-off that criminals face when deciding whether to stay an additional minute while robbing…

"Assignment procedure biases in randomized policy experiments" abstract Randomized controlled trials (RCT) have become a dominant empirical tool in applied economics. The internal validity of RCTs crucially depends on the (implicit) assumption that the procedure assigning subjects to treatment and control groups has no effect on behavior. We show theoretically that this assumption is violated…

"Does Information Matter for Women Decisions? Experimental Evidence from Childcare" abstract Gender stereotypes are well eradicated also among women. Yet, a recent literature suggests that learning from other women experience about the effects of maternal employment on children outcomes may increase female labor force participation. In this paper, we design a survey experiment to provide…

"Statistical hypothesis testing and private information" Abstract This paper provides a rationalization for using classical one-sided hypothesis tests for approving innovations (e.g., new pharmaceuticals, new government programs). I consider this problem of statistical decision making in a setting where proponents of innovations (i) stand to benefit from approval decisions even if their innovations have a negative effect, (ii) possess private…

"Rel(a)ying on your team-mates is not enough: On sequential contributions to team production under competition" abstract Many tasks require the input by more than one person very often with members of the team contributing sequentially. However, team production is plagued by disincentive problems. In this paper we investigate individual incentives to team production with sequential contributions and competing teams.…

"Decision-Making Under Subjective Risk" Abstract: The primary objective of this paper is to develop a framework in which a decision-maker may have subjective beliefs about the "riskiness'' of prospects, even though the risk structure of these prospects is objectively specified. Put differently, we investigate preferences over risky alternatives by postulating that such preferences arise from…

"Overbooking" Abstract We consider optimal pricing policies for airlines when passengers are uncertain at the time of ticketing of their eventual realized willingness to pay for air travel. Auctions at the time of departure efficiently allocate space and a profit maximizing airline can capitalize on these gains by overbooking flights and repurchasing excess tickets from…

cancelled