I am an assistant professor of economics at the University of Louvain. I study how risk and uncertainty shape economic decision making. I have a particular interest in understanding how contemporary religious institutions evolve to provide substitutes to insurance and other services that might otherwise be provided by formal markets.
I apply insights from behavioural economics to develop descriptive models of decision making under risk. Two important areas of insight include motivated beliefs and components of prospect theory–such as probability weighting and loss aversion. A strand of my research focuses on how such preferences can be measured experimentally. I have experience running a variety of lab, field, and lab-type field experiments in what some coauthors insist on calling “exotic places”.
Please click here for my CV.
If you are a Behavioral or Experimental Economist looking for
conferences, Marco Schwarz and I maintain a spreadsheet here.
Publications
- God insures those who pay: formal insurance and religious offering
in Ghana (2020). Quarterly Journal of Economics
(with E. Auriol, J. Lassebie, E. Raiber, P. Seabright)
[pdf]
- Measuring Time and Risk Preferences in an Integrated
Framework (2019). Games and Economic Behaviour
(with M. Abdellaoui, E. Kemel, F. Vieider)
[pdf] [code and data]
Working papers
- Time for Tea Now. Discounting for Money and Consumption without the
Utility Confound (2018).
(with M. Abdellaoui, E. Kemel, F.Vieider)
- Take your time or take your chance: Time discounting as a distorted
probability (2018).
(with M. Abdellaoui, E. Kemel, F. Vieider)
Work in progress
- Risk, rationality, and economic well-being: evidence from Indian
panel data.
(with S. Choi and F. Vieider)
- A comparison of risk elicitation mechanisms in the field.
(with F. Vieider)
- Platform competition between religious organisations. Evidence from Pentecostal churches in Ghana.