I am an assistant professor of economics at the University of Louvain and I study how risk and uncertainty, and the psychological burdens they ential, shape economic decision making. I am particularly interested in how contemporary religious institutions provide substitutes to insurance and other services that might otherwise be provided by formal markets. I have experience running a variety of lab, field, and lab-type field experiments in what some coauthors insist on calling “exotic places”.

My recent ERC Starting Grant (2026 to 2031) “Invisible Hands of Gods: How Religion Improves Economic Decision-Making and Outcomes” pulls these interests together.

Please click here for my CV.


Publications

  1. Religion and Economic Development: Past, Present and Future (2026) Handbook of Culture and Economic Behavior
    (with S. Becker, S. Pfaff and J. Rubin)
  2. When Money Can’t Buy Political Love: Lab Experiments on Vote Buying in Ghana and Uganda. Economic Development and Cultural Change (2025)
    (with D. Burbidge and N. Cheeseman)
    [code and data]
  3. Time for Tea. Measuring Discounting for Money and Consumption Without the Utility Confound. The Journal of Development Economics (2024)
    (with M. Abdellaoui, E. Kemel, F. Vieider)
    [code and data]
  4. The Globalizability of Temporal Discounting. Nature Human Behavior (2022)
    (second author in large collaboration with K. Ruggeri,…, and E. Garcia-Garzon)
    [code and data]
  5. Field Experiments in the Global South: Assessing Risks, Localizing Benefits, and Addressing Positionality. PS: Political Science and Politics (2021)
    (with E. Hermanⓡ, E. Wellman, G. Blair, L. Pruett, K. Opalo, H. Alarian, A. Grossman, Y. Tan, A. Dyzenhaus, and N. Owsley.)
  6. God insures those who pay: formal insurance and religious offering in Ghana. Quarterly Journal of Economics (2020)
    (with E. Auriol, J. Lassebie, E. Raiber and P. Seabright)
    [code and data]
  7. Measuring Time and Risk Preferences in an Integrated Framework. Games and Economic Behaviour (2019)
    (with M. Abdellaoui, E. Kemel, F. Vieider)
    [code and data]

Working papers

  1. Faith-Based Platforms (2026)
    (with E. Auriol, E. Raiber and P. Seabright)

Other writing

  1. Four reasons why analysis of economic policy and religion go hand-in-hand in sub-Saharan Africa. PEGNet Policy Brief (2021)

  2. Economics Experiments in Africa: How Many and by Whom? CODESRIA Bulletin No. 1 (2020)

Work in progress

  1. Cognitive consequences of insecure national belonging
    (with R. Banerjee, J. Gomes, and E. Lindstam)
  2. Using religion to ensure mental health in Ghana