Working Papers

Parental Pressure and Educational Choices (pdf)

This paper tests for parental pressure as a driver of students' post-secondary educational choices and  mechanism behind socio-economic disparities in college attendance. To understand parental pressure, I conduct a field experiment with students and parents in Germany. Importantly, I experimentally make students' stated aspirations visible to parents. Visibility to parents strongly influences students' stated college aspirations and field rankings. Students at a Gymnasium - the most academic type of high school - increase their college aspirations under parental pressure, whereas students at comprehensive high schools show the opposite reaction. Given heterogeneous reactions by socio-economic background, visibility to parents doubles the socio-economic gap in college aspirations from 13 to 26 percentage points. Students' eventual college attendance and chosen fields more often equal their initial aspirations when these were visible to parents rather than not, implying that parental pressure likely also influences ultimate decisions. These findings suggest that parental pressure has the power to significantly influence individual choices and therefore societal outcomes such as social mobility and the allocation of talent. 

Selective Memory around Big Life Decisions [pdf]

Selective memory can lead people to mistake life outcomes as what they always wanted. Using data on past fertility desires from a panel tracking fertility preferences and actual fertility for 3,936 Kenyans from their early twenties to their thirties, I provide monetary incentives to remember and to be reminded of past desires. I find that: (i) 29% of respondents have more children by their thirties than once desired; (ii) despite incentives, especially respondents with excess fertility misremember past desires in the direction of current fertility and do not want to be reminded of them, consistent with motivated memory; (iii) selective memory affects the intergenerational transmission of fertility preferences.

Coverage: Roland Bénabou's 2021 Jean-Jacques Laffont Prize lecture on "Beliefs and Misbeliefs: The Economics of Wishful Thinking", video here (1:04:24 to 1:09:40)

Identity and Economic Incentives [pdf] (with Eugen Dimant, Kwabena Donkor, Lorenz Götte, Michael Kurschilgen)

Abstract: We develop a theoretical model and conduct field experiments to distinguish the impact of identity on shaping beliefs from its direct effect on preferences in individual investment choices. Our model suggests that identity distorts individuals' perceptions of potential outcomes and leads to the discounting of outcomes from identity-incongruent sources. We validate our theoretical predictions through lab-in-field experiments, involving individuals with either affiliations or neutral stances towards investment opportunities. In these experiments, we elicit beliefs and investment choices with and without identity considerations while exogenously varying the material tradeoff between assets. Individuals exhibit systematic over-optimism about assets aligned with their identity, and invest 20% more in these assets than in neutral ones. After accounting for individuals' beliefs and risk preferences, our structural estimates show that participants undervalue gains from identity-incongruent assets by 17% to 27%. Counterfactual simulations indicate that identity-distorted beliefs account for 30% to 44% of the observed investment gap, with the remainder attributable to identity-driven preferences.

Publications

The Illusion of Stable Fertility Preferences (Population Studies) (with Joan Hamory, Jennifer Johnson-Hanks and Edward Miguel) [pdf, replication data]

Abstract: Fertility preferences have long played a key role in models of fertility differentials and change. We examine the stability of preferences over time using rich panel data on Kenyan women’s fertility desires, expectations, actual fertility, and recall of desires in three waves over a nine-year period, when respondents were in their 20s. We find that although desired fertility is quite unstable, most women perceive their desires to be stable. Under hypothetical future scenarios, few expect their desired fertility to increase over time but, in fact, such increases in fertility desires are common. Moreover, when asked to recall past desires, most respondents report previously wanting exactly as many children as they desire today. These patterns of bias are consistent with the emerging view that fertility desires are contextual, emotionally laden, and structured by identity. 

Work in Progress

More drafts to come soon...