«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 an assistant professor of economics at City University of London and an affiliate researcher at the Smith Institute for Political Economy and Philosophy at Chapman University (Orange, Calif.). I am also a BeLab affiliate at the University of Pennsylvania Center for Social Norms & Behavioral Dynamics; previously, I was a PPE fellow in the UPenn Philosophy, Politics & Economics Program (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 game-theoretic modeling, experimentation, statistical and machine learning tools.
M. C. Escher: Up and Down