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

  • Bubbles and Financial Professionals (with Weitzel, U., Huber, C., Huber, J., Kirchler, M., Lindner, F., Review of Financial Studies (forthcoming), 2019)
    Link to latest Working Paper version
  • Ready-made oTree apps for time preference elicitation methods (with Rose, M., Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Finance, 2019)
    Link to Article
  • 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 Behaviour, 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

 

 

Work in Progress

  • Probability Weighting under Induced Anticipated Anxiety (with Jan Engelmann and Christoph Huber)
    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  between-subjects design with 194 participants. In particular, the main contribution of our work is that we 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 stastistically significant evidence for lower cognitive abilities being correlated with more noise in decision-making in general, however, independent of treatment.

 

  • Price Paths, Stress, and Evaluation Periods
    Manuscript in Preparation
  • Incentives, Returns, and Deception in Financial Advice (with Christoph Huber)
    Manuscript in Preparation

 

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

  • Support Grant (Förderungsstipendium) for experimental research, University of Innsbruck, 2019
  • Travel grant (KWA-Stipendium), University of Innsbruck, 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
  • IMEBESS Conference, Utrecht
  • M-BEES Conference, Maastricht
  • Experimental Finance Conference, Copenhagen
  • ESA European Meeting, Dijon

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