Columbia University 2019 - 2025 (expected)
- Ph.D. in Economics
- New York, NY, USA
Columbia University 2019 - 2025 (expected)
Rational Choice Overload (with Mark Dean)
We present and experimentally test a collection of search theoretic explanations for "choice overload", the phenomenon by which a default alternative is selected more often in larger choice sets. A standard search model, with constant search costs and a known distribution of item quality, cannot give rise to choice overload. If one instead assumes that either (i) the Decision Maker (DM) must learn the quality distribution, (ii) search costs are increasing, or (iii) the DM decides the search strategy in advance, then choice overload can occur. Unlike existing models, our approach does not require ad hoc psychological costs (decision avoidance), or for the DM to assume the choice set was selected by a profit-maximizing firm (contextual inference). Data from our laboratory experiments are consistent with choice overload caused by search with learning and increasing costs, and cannot be explained by decision avoidance or contextual inference.
Experiment: https://lplarac.github.io/co_exhibit/
Liquid Democracy: Two Experiments on Delegation in Voting (with Victoria Mooers, Alessandra Casella, Joseph Campbell, and Dilip Ravindran)
NBER Working Paper 30794
Second Experiment: https://lplarac.github.io/ldrdk/full.html
Simple and Complex Mental Models
Microeconomic Analysis I, Columbia University, Fall 2023
Market Design, Columbia University, Spring 2023
Intermediate Microeconomics, Columbia University, Fall 2022
Market Design, Columbia University, Spring 2021
Microeconomic Analysis I, Columbia University, Fall 2020
Mathematical Analysis II, Fundação Getulio Vargas (FGV EPGE), Q2 2018