Research

I am a mathematical social scientist working in the intersection of economics, social work and computer science. My research focuses on the behavioral “supply chain” of public/social service provision: determinants of voluntary contributions, design of mechanisms, and models of behavior of the very low income.

CV.

• The Effect of Religious Prohibition of Economic Behavior, with Rebecca Morton, Kai Ou, Xiangdong Qin, and Gumilang Sahadewo, revision submitted to Experimental Economics

  We conducted a multi-country experiment on whether a reminder of the Islamic prohibition on interest indeed induces lenders in the lab to avoid interest and choose Profit-Loss Sharing arrangements (PLS) as an alternative.

• The Role of Effort Cost Perception in Outcome Bias, with Robizon Khubulashvili and Xiaohong Wang

  Visually observing effort reduces principal’s outcome bias when rewarding agent’s effort in tasks with stochastic outcomes. Even though principal numerically know agent’s effort level, they were uncertain about how costly effort was until she observes agents at work.

• To Mask or Not to Mask: Salience of Risk and the Efficacy of Government Messaging with Lucy Gillespie and Daniel Jones

  In an online experiment, we test the interactive effects of displaying state COVID-19 statistics and government messages (e.g., recommendations on mask-wearing) on Americans’ valuation for masks at a time when messaging about the appropriate mitigating actions was very much in flux. Our findings suggest that sending an action-oriented message early is crucial for effective government messaging.

• Worker-Firm Relational Contracts in the Time of Shutdowns: Experimental Evidence with Colin Camerer, Experimental Economics (2021)

  Market efficiency can persist despite very frequent firm shutdowns. Relational contract adapts to one where workers function as “freelancers” instead of employees, and workers (particularly the weakest) suffers.

• Globalization and Altruism Towards the Poor in Developing Countries: Experimental Evidence from India” with Nita Rudra, Comparative Political Studies (2020)

  When multinational firms enter developing countries, the poor are perceived as needing less help.

• Casual Contact and Ethnic Bias: Experimental Evidence from Afghanistan” with Luke Condra, The Journal of Politics (2019), 81.3

  Ethnic bias, as measured by lack of altruism, increases when non-coethnics are physically present. Contact-induced bias appears connected to language differences.

• Clerics and Scriptures: Experimentally Disentangling the Influence of Religious Authority in Afghanistan with Luke Condra and Mohammad Isaqzadeh, British Journal of Political Science (2017), pp.1-19

  Solicitation by religious authorities compels people to give, but giving drops to the minimum. Intrinsic motivation appears crowded out.

• Peer Coordination and Communication Following Disaster Warnings: An Experimental Framework, Safety Science (2016), 90, pp. 24-32

  A design proposal to test the role of altruistic information sharing in evacuation settings. Read more.

• Wallflowers: Experimental Evidence of an Aversion to Standing Out with Daniel Jones. Management Science (2014), 60 (7), pp. 1757-1771. Online Appendix B, C, D.

  Removing anonymity in giving and volunteering induces women to imitate others’ prosocial behavior, suggesting gender specific concerns about appearing to be different.

• No Excuses for Good Behavior: Volunteering and the Social Environment with Margaret Anne McConnell. Journal of Public Economics (2011), 95, 5-6, pp 445-454.

  People do not want to be the most unaltruistic person in a room — and hence will use excuses to avoid taking prosocial action while protecting their reputation.

ECON + SOCIAL WORK

Field experiments and surveys with the working homeless, former inmates, and minimum wage workers in the United States.

• Utilization of Social Services Among The Previously Incarcerated with Marco Castillo and Ragan Petrie

  We investigate whether encouragement to use post-incarceration support services reduces re-arrest. Voluntary participants in our field experiment are offered a monetary incentive to complete either three or five visits to a support service provider. We find that encouragement of support service usage via the goals used in our study can be effective for some people, but not others.

• Awareness of Low Self-Control: Theory and Evidence at a Homeless Shelter with Elif Incekara Hafalir, Journal of Economic Psychology (2017), 61, pp.39-54

  Survey measures of self-control appear to be driven by one’s awareness of his/her self-control problems. Larger self-reported problems among the working homeless were correlated with larger savings in shelter lockboxes, a commitment savings device.

• Competition as a Savings Incentive: a Field Experiment at a Homeless Shelter with Tomomi Tanaka, Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization (2013), 95, pp. 240-251

  A savings competition among the working homeless at a transitional shelter temporarily increased savings, but the effect does not appear to persist in the long run.

• Ongoing studies:

  • Precarious Work Project with Lu-In Wang, Carrie Leana, Sara Goodkind, Zachary Brewster and Xiaohong Wang
  • From Barely Making It To…? Effects of Raising Wages Among Low-Wage Workers with Jeffrey Shook, Ray Engel, and other colleagues from the School of Social Work.

ECON + CS
Design of mechanisms for practical use.

• Improving Citizen-initiated Police Reform Efforts through Interactive Design: A Case Study in Allegheny County with Yongsu Ahn, Eliana Beigel, Noah Braun, Collin Griffin, Blair Mickles, Emmaline Rial, Equity and Access in Algorithms, Mechanisms, and Optimization (EAAMO’22). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA.

  Our project aims to provide citizens and community organizers with a better understanding of the legal landscape of police accountability in Allegheny County, allowing them to more effectively advocate for reform. We overcome data inaccessibility, data complexity, and the fragmentation of data across municipalities by creating an open collaborative network with community leaders, gathering contracts and other data on over 100 police departments in Allegheny County, and creating a web platform to navigate them.

• Project 412Connect: Bridging Students and Marginalized Communities, with Michael Hamilton, Alex DiChristofano, and Mara McCloud, Equity and Access in Algorithms, Mechanisms, and Optimization (EAAMO ’21). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, Article 5, 1–12. https://doi.org/10.1145/3465416.3483304

  We investigate the challenges Black-owned businesses face in the United States and design and implement a platform, 412Connect (https://www.412connect.org/), to increase online support for Pittsburgh Black-owned businesses from students in the Pittsburgh university community. The site operates by coordinating interactions between student users and participating businesses via targeted recommendations.

• Accounting for Noise in the Microfoundation of Information Aggregation, Games and Economic Behavior (2017), 101, pp. 334-353

  I develop a computational method to rank a set of information structures on how “incomplete” aggregation will be. Aggregation in information structures that requires human subjects to be very precise/noiseless are ex-ante predicted to be poor.

• Prediction Markets: Alternative Mechanisms for Complex Environments with Few Traders with PJ Healy, Richard Lowery, and John Ledyard. Management Science (2010), 56 (11), pp. 1977-1996.

  When information is complex, information aggregation is incomplete. Non-market mechanisms outperforms the double auction.

• Mobile Communication Surrounding Political Violence in Cote d’Ivoire with Daniel Berger and Shankar Kalyanaraman

  With data from Orange Telecom and the United Nations peacekeeping operations in Côte d’Ivoire, we show that mobile phone usage data may be aggregating signals about incipient political violence. Comparisons of mobile patterns preceeding festivals and sporting events are included.

• Ongoing studies:

  • Building a Smart City Economy and Information Ecosystem to Motivate Pro-Social Transportation Behavior with Alexandros Labrinidis , Yu-ru Lin, and other colleagues from the School of Computing and Information.