Incentive or Information? Interventions to Address Externalities (Job Market Paper)
This paper compares two policy tools, financial incentives and information design, for mitigating overuse in common-pool resource (CPR) environments with externalities and uncertainty. In a controlled laboratory experiment, participants choose between a risky outside option (e.g., a road that may or may not be under construction) and a congestion-sensitive alternative whose payoff declines with crowding. The Incentive treatment introduces a Pigouvian tax to internalize the social cost of congestion. The Persuasion treatment implements Bayesian persuasion: a central planner sends state-contingent messages to a fixed fraction of participants, using a theoretically derived signal structure to guide group behavior. Unlike prior studies, this design embeds uncertainty about the outside option’s return and incorporates multi-agent strategic interaction in a one-sender, multi-receiver framework. The experiment allows a clean comparison between payoff-based and belief-based interventions, providing new insights into when persuasion can substitute for taxation—especially in settings where monetary policies face resistance or are infeasible.
Social Dilemmas with Endogenous Resources with Eye Eoun Jung, Siru Liu, & Ben Mosier IV
This study investigates how the origin of shared resources in social dilemma games influences individual behavior. By distinguishing between endogenous resources, created through deliberate collective action, and exogenous resources, existing independently of participants' choices, we explore how these origins impact decisions involving trust and reciprocity. We construct a novel two-stage public goods game to investigate the role of subjective expectations in shaping cooperative behavior. In this framework, social dilemmas involve strategic risks, as individuals weigh the potential benefits of mutual cooperation against the risks of exploitation or negative reciprocity. By incorporating belief elicitation, we examine how participants’ expectations about others’ actions influence their willingness to cooperate. Drawing on theories of risk, we analyze the interplay between beliefs, trust, and reciprocity in decisions regarding public resources. Our findings reveal how the endogeneity of resource formation impacts behavior and beliefs about others’ actions, providing valuable insights for the management and policy development of public goods.
Private Information and Cheap Talk in Uncertain Environmental Public Goods with Sarah Jacobson & Justin Kakeu
This study explores strategic communication in global climate negotiations, where nations with private information about uncertain tipping points may exaggerate risks to influence collective action. Climate agreements like the Kyoto Protocol and Paris Agreement face challenges due to power asymmetries and informational advantages, leading to strategic misrepresentation through “cheap talk.” Using a threshold public goods game, this research examines how private information and economic disparities shape exaggeration and contribution behavior. The findings contribute to the literature on public goods under uncertainty and provide insights into mitigating free-riding and improving cooperation in international climate policy.
Effect of Use of E-cigarettes on Adolescence Obesity
This study employs standardized e-cigarette state tax as an instrumental variable to investigate the plausible causal link between e-cigarette usage and Body Mass Index (BMI) among adolescents using, utilizing data from the Youth Risk Behavior Surveillance System(YRBSS). The results suggest that the use of e-cigarettes caused lower BMI, subsequently leading to a reduction in adolescent weight.
Brocas, Isabelle. Lu, Wen. 2020. “Inequality in the US: the lost American dream.” Los Angeles Behavioral Economics Laboratory reports, July, 2020. Article Link.