Research

Publications

Narratives about the Macroeconomy | with Ingar Haaland, Chris Roth, Mirko Wiederholt, and Johannes Wohlfart
Accepted, The Review of Economic Studies, 2025
[Coverage: VoxEU, FAS (German), SPIEGEL [1] (German), SPIEGEL [2] (German)]
Summary: We provide evidence on narratives about the macroeconomy—the stories people tell to explain macroeconomic phenomena—in the context of the recent rise in inflation. We show that narratives about the past shape how people forecast the future and how they interpret new information.

Shallow Meritocracy
The Review of Economic Studies, 2025,  92(2), 772–807
[Winner of the Distinguished CESifo Affiliate Award in Behavioral Economics 2022]
Summary: Meritocracies aspire to reward hard work but promise not to judge individuals by the circumstances into which they were born. However, circumstances often shape the choice to work hard. I show that people's merit judgments are insensitive to this effect: they hold others responsible for their choices, even if these choices have been shaped by unequal circumstances.

Understanding Markets with Socially Responsible Consumers| with Marc Kaufmann and Botond Kőszegi
The Quarterly Journal of Economics, 2024, 139(3), 1989–2035.
Summary: We theoretically analyze the behavior and market effects of socially responsible consumers who care about the externalities associated with their purchases. Equilibrium feedback non-trivially dampens their mitigation efforts, and even consumers who fully "internalize the externality" overconsume externality-generating goods. Empirically, we show that many consumers anticipate such a dampening effect.

Subjective Models of the Macroeconomy: Evidence From Experts and Representative Samples | with Carlo Pizzinelli, Chris Roth, and Johannes Wohlfart
The Review of Economic Studies, 2022, 89(6), 2958–2991
[Coverage: New York Times, Finance & Development]
Summary: We study people's subjective models of the macroeconomy and measure their beliefs about the effects of macroeconomic shocks. Beliefs are widely dispersed, even about the directional effects of shocks, and there are large differences in beliefs between households and experts.

Working Papers

Mental Models of the Stock Market | with Philipp Schirmer and Johannes Wohlfart
Summary: Investors' return expectations are pivotal in stock markets, but the reasoning behind these expectations remains a black box for economists. This paper sheds light on economic agents' mental models—their subjective understanding—of the stock market.

Quick-Fixing: Near-Rationality in Consumption and Savings Behavior | with Joel P. Flynn, George Nikolakoudis, and Karthik A. Sastry
Summary: When optimization is costly, people may rely on simple solutions: quick-fixes. We embed this idea into a standard consumption-savings model and design a survey to document the quick-fixes households use in response to income shocks. The model reveals that these quick fixes are near-rational (i.e., have small utility loss), yet significantly impact households' MPCs.

What's Worth Knowing? Economists' Opinions about Economics | with Armin Falk
[Coverage: VoxEU, LSE Impact blog, Ökonomenstimme (German), atlantico (French)]
Summary: We study economists’ views about what is worth knowing and document a coordination failure, i.e., a discrepancy between what economists consider to be worth knowing and the research they actually produce.

Research on Climate Change

Globally Representative Evidence on the Actual and Perceived Support for Climate Action | with Teodora Boneva, Felix Chopra, and Armin Falk
Nature Climate Change, 2024, 14, 253–259
[Coverage: e.g., Financial Times, ZEIT, FAZ, SPIEGEL, Deutschlandfunk, Our World in Data, CarbonBrief, see AltMetric score]
Summary: A globally representative survey reveals widespread support for climate action across the globe. People on all continents systematically underestimate the willingness of their fellow citizens.

Misperceived Social Norms and Willingness to Act Against Climate Change | with Teodora Boneva, Felix Chopra, and Armin Falk
The Review of Economics and Statistics, 2024
[IZA Award for Innovative Research on the Economics of Climate Change]
[Coverage: Ökonomenstimme (German), ZEIT (German)]
Summary: People in the US underestimate climate-friendly behaviors and norms among their fellow citizens. Correcting these misperceptions raises their willingness to act against climate change.