Research

Research Interests

The main focus of my research is on risk preferences and related concepts (ambiguity/vagueness aversion, non-linear probability weighting, investment decisions, market behavior, etc.). In my projects, I make use of several tools of economics and finance, but also embedd my findings in a framework provided by neuroscience and psychology. By doing so, I am interested in the temporal and contextual stability of preferences – disentangling preference shifts from pure noise in decisions – and how individual preferences translate into experimental market settings. Contexts range from the experimental induction of exogenous stress to inducing anticipated anxiety. My aim is to combine a model-theoretic framework with evidence from laboratory experiments to be able to base  my findings on and compare my results to predicitions of behavioral economics.

 

Publications in Refereed Journals

  • Evaluating the replicability of social science experiments in Nature and Science between 2010 and 2015 (with Camerer, C., Dreber, A., Holzmeister, F., Ho, T.-H., Huber, J., Johannesson, M., Kirchler, M., Nave, G., Nosek, B., Pfeiffer, T., Altmejd, A., Buttrick, N., Chan, T., Chen, Y., Forsell, E., Gampa, A., Heikenstein, E., Hummer, L., Taisuke, I., Isaksson, S., Manfredi, D., Wagenmakers, E., and Wu, H., Nature Human Behavior, 2018)
    Link to Article
  • No need for more time: Intertemporal allocation decisions under time pressure  (with Florian Lindner, Journal of Economic Psychology, 2017)
    Link to Article

 

 

Working Papers

  • Bubbles and Financial Professionals (with Weitzel, U., Huber, C., Huber, J., Kirchler, M., Lindner, F., Revise and Resubmit – Review of Financial Studies, 2018)
    Link to Working Paper
  • Individual attitudes and market dynamics towards imprecision (with Christoph Huber)
    Link to Working Paper

 

 

Work in Progress

  • Probability Weighting under Induced Anticipated Anxiety (with Jan Engelmann)
    Work in Progress

 

  • The Impact of Stress on Risky Choice: Preference Shifts or Noise?(with Elle Parslow)
    Abstract:
    We analyze the impact of stress on risky choice in a large-scale between-subjects design with N = 194 participants. In particular, the main contribution of our work is that we are able to disentangle errors in decision making from an actual shift in preferences between our experimental treatments no-stress and stress. Acute stress is induced using the Trier Social Stress Task for Groups (TSST-G, Von Dawans et al. (2011)), risk preferences are elicited using a recent method developed by Andersson et al. (2016). Additionally controlling for cognitive reflection (CRT, Frederick (2005); Toplak et al. (2014), we analyze whether our results are driven by different levels of cognitive ability as the driver for observed noise within and between treatments. We find that, controlling for noise, risk attitudes are stable between conditions. The overall number of decision errors is low on average and does not increase under stress. Additionally, we find suggestive evidence for lower cognitive abilities being correlated with more noise in decision-making in general, however, independent of treatment.

 

  • o-Tree: Ready-Made Apps for Time Preference Elicitation Methods (with Michael Rose)
    Abstract:
    In the realm of time preference elicitation, several different methods to elicit preferences from individual choices and subsequently estimate discounting and utility function parameters have evolved. We provide ready-made oTree (Chen et al., 2016) applications for three of the mostly used elicitation tools in experiments. The first method (CTB – Convex Time Budgets) elicits discounting and utility function curvature jointly from choices over time (Andreoni and Sprenger, 2012; Andreoni et al., 2015). The second method elicits time preferences and utility function curvature using two different tasks and jointly estimating parameters (DMPL – Double Multiple Price List). It is fully nested in our first method and can be complemented via a risk elicitation task by Holzmeister (2017). The third method elicits discounting without eliciting utility (Attema et al., 2016) by measuring discounting without using explicit functional forms for utility. We provide the general theoretical background of the elicitation approaches, experimental designs, as well as a detailed description of our programs. Both programs can be easily and flexibly adapted to the user’s needs, even without any prior programming knowledge in oTree.

 

  • Myopia Revisited: Stress, Risk Perception, and Evaluation Periods
  • Risk and Time in Auctions: Bidding over Time in First-Price Sealed Bid Auctions

 

Research Visits

2019

  • University of Amsterdam (Jan Engelmann)
    July 2018 – present
  • University of California, San Diego (Uri Gneezy)
    March – April

2018

  • University of Amsterdam (Jan Engelmann)  
    July – present
  • Stockholm School of Economics (Anna Dreber) 
    March – April
  • Utrecht University  (Utz Weitzel)
    February

2017

  • University of California, San Diego (Marta Serra-Garcia)
    March – June
  • Chapman University (Dave Porter)
    March

2015  

  • University of California, San Diego
    (semester abroad during Master’s studies)     
    September – December

 

Grants and Awards

  • Travel grant (KWA-Stipendium), 2017
  • Research grant, Aktion D. Swarovski KG, 2017 (together with Christoph Huber)

 

Conference/Workshop Presentations

2019

  • Spring School in Behavioral Economics, UC San Diego, Poster Presentation
  • Innsbruck Winter School on Credence Goods, Incentives and Behavior, Kühtai

2018

  • SFB Annual Workshop, Innsbruck
  • Research in Behavioral Finance Conference, Amsterdam
  • Internal CREED Seminar, University of Amsterdam
  • ESA World Meeting, Berlin
  • Internal Brown Bag Seminar, Stockholm School of Economics

2017 

  • Austrian Working Group on Banking and Finance Workshop, Obergurgl

2016

  • 13th eeecon Workshop, Innsbruck

 

Attended Summer/Spring Schools and Workshops

2018
Workshop: BEAM-ABEE Workshop, Amsterdam
Summer School: Experimental Finance 2019 Summer School, Heidelberg
Workshop: The 6th Toulouse Economics and Biology Workshop, Toulouse

2017
Spring School in Behavioral Economics, UC San Diego
Summer School: Incorporating More Realistic Psychology into Economic Analysis, NHH Bergen