«Reason is, and ought only to be the slave of
the passions, and can never pretend to any other office than to
serve and obey them.» (David Hume)
I am a research scholar at the Smith Institute for Political Economy and Philosophy at Chapman University. Previously I was a PPE fellow in the Philosophy, Politics & Economics Program at the University of Pennsylvania and at its Center for Social Norms & Behavioral Dynamics. I specialize in Behavioral Economics and Game Theory (cv). My research has been published in the American Economic Journal: Microeconomics, Quantitative Economics, and the Journal of Economic Theory, among other outlets.
My work integrates theoretical and empirical results, in such a way to be readily amenable to policy analysis. Some of my research is inspired by philosophical accounts of “informal institutions”, like social norms and conventions; in other research, I have examined epistemic issues in perception and risk-taking behavior. More generally, my work revolves around non-standard knowledge structures and preferences, the emergence of informal rules of conduct, and the impact of information transmission on individual behavior and public policies. My research methods include predictive modeling, experimentation, statistical and machine learning tools.
M. C. Escher: Up and Down