Lucas de Lara

Rational Choice Overload (with Mark Dean)

Paper Link

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/

A Closer Look at the Gambler's Fallacy

Paper Link

Experiment: https://lplarac.github.io/gf_exhibit/

Liquid Democracy: Two Experiments on Delegation in Voting (with Victoria Mooers, Alessandra Casella, Joseph Campbell, and Dilip Ravindran)

NBER Working Paper 30794

Paper Link

Second Experiment: https://lplarac.github.io/ldrdk/full.html

Simple and Complex Mental Models