In this episode, we talk with Robert Metcalfe from Boston University about his paper “Measuring the Welfare Effects of Shame and Pride,” which he co-authored with Luigi Butera, William Morrison and Dmitry Taubinsky. To investigate how public recognition can be employed as a vehicle for motivating desirable behaviour, they develop a portable money-metric method to measure the direct welfare effects of shame and pride, which they then deploy in a series of experiments centred around exercise and charitable giving behaviour. Tune in for a discussion of the project’s inception, its design considerations and execution, including its evolvement in light of the global pandemic.

In this episode, we are joined by Ariel Rubinstein from NYU and Tel Aviv University, to discuss his paper “Equilibrium in the Jungle,” which appeared in The Economic Journal in 2007. Co-authored with Michele Piccione, the paper constructs a system that is analogous to the conventional ‘exchange economy’ of micro theory, except that the forces governing allocations are those of power and coercion, rather than prices. Tune in for a discussion of the state of modern economic theory, the interplay between research and policy change and whether cafés provide a superior arena for innovative thought, when compared to conventional office spaces.

If you want to learn more about the economics of the jungle, you can download Economic Fables from Ariel’s webpage here (as well as other textbooks). 

In this episode, we speak with Sally Sadoff from the Rady School of Management, UC San Diego, and Andy Brownback from the University of Arkansas, about their field work with community colleges. They discuss two recent papers they coauthored on the topic. The first paper, entitled “Improving College Instruction through Incentives,” investigates the effect of offering performance-based incentives to community college instructors on students’ achievement. The second paper studies the educational benefits of enrolling in college summer schools and whether students correctly perceive the potential returns.

In this episode, we talk with Horacio Larreguy from the Harvard Kennedy School about his paper “Who Debates, Wins? At-Scale Experimental Evidence on Debate Participation in a Liberian Election,” which he co-authored with Jeremy Bowles. They conduct a field experiment in Liberia to understand how the participation of legislative candidates in nationwide debate initiatives affects their electoral outcomes.

In this episode, we talk with Anya Samek from the University of Southern California about her paper “Dynamic Inconsistency in Food Choice: Experimental Evidence from Two Food Deserts,” which she co-authored with Sally Sadoff and Charlie Sprenger. In the context of two home grocery delivery programs, this paper provides evidence of (i) dynamic inconsistency between immediate and advance choices of food and (ii) a surprising negative link between dynamic inconsistency and commitment demand to advance choices.

During this conversation, Anya also refers to two papers on the topic of field experiments:

• “Field experiments on food choice in grocery stores: A ‘how-to’ guide,” co-authored with Kathryn A. Carroll
• “Advantages and disadvantages of field experiments,” in Handbook of Research Methods and Applications in Experimental Economics, ed. by A. Schram and A. Ule

In this episode, we talk with Ned Augenblick from the University of Berkeley Haas School of Business about his paper with Matthew Rabin entitled “Belief Movement, Uncertainty Reduction, & Rational Updating”. This paper analyzes the relationship between (i) the movement in the beliefs of a Bayesian updater when new information arrives, and (ii) the associated reduction in his uncertainty. This relationship is used to develop statistical tests of rational updating that are then applied to datasets of beliefs.