Publication forthcoming at the European Economic Review | with Eva Vivalt and Bobbie Macdonald
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PDFDoes technological change affect ethical beliefs? We study the case of synthetic alternatives to meat products using an incentivized survey experiment. A model of motivated beliefs predicts that the existence of an improved alternative will increase objections to meat production on moral grounds; moreover, this effect should be stronger the larger the improvement in the alternative option. We find that informing consumers of a new alternative diminishes moral concerns with conventional animal farming, but those who are experimentally nudged to view the new alternative relatively more positively do indeed report more moral concern for animal welfare. The findings suggest a backlash effect in which people react to innovation by increasing their support for existing practices, but one that depends on how positively they view the alternative.
R&R at the Journal of Public Economics | with Karan Makkar
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PDFIn an incentivized survey experiment, we investigate whether a representative sample's behavior is consistent with the standard approach to the intergenerational social discount rate. In three separate modules, respondents allocate resources between two people of the same age at different points in time, between time periods for the same person, and between time periods for themselves. We find that respondents consistently discount future consumption less when deciding across people than when deciding for themselves or another person. The divergence among respondents' discount rates and with actual interest rates raises theoretical issues, such as potential arbitrage opportunities and inconsistent treatment of members of different age groups. When confronted with these issues, respondents are insensitive to efficiency considerations that dominate the traditional economic approach to the social discount rate. Respondents' political beliefs, donation choices, and longer-term decisions are consistent with a significant divergence between respondents' preferences for intergenerational equity and the conventional welfarist treatment of intertemporal choice.
R&R at the European Economic Review | with Carl Meyer and Trevor Woolley
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Kilts Center at Chicago Booth Marketing Data Center PaperThe past decades have seen a number of new policies and food technology businesses concerned with alleviating animal welfare or environmental impacts of animal agriculture. We study whether there is evidence that consumer behavior is changing in parallel by examining real grocery purchases matched with machine-scanned label data. We find that meat consumption has been at its highest in recent years, consistent with prior observations, but we offer the first observational evidence that a growing share of the population is purchasing fewer or no meat items and other animal products. While some of this trend can be explained by changes in the volume of grocery purchases, we suggest that media and generational turnover are further driving this trend. We finally discuss the plausible effects of meat alternatives, finding that they cannot have been a primary driver of this trend and have an unclear effect on meat and animal product consumption.
with Ben Grodeck, Oliver Hauser, and Johannes Lohse
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PDFIn both families and states, pay-it-forward schemes — where one cohort invests in the next (e.g., via education) with the expectation of future returns (e.g., via retirement support) — play a crucial role. However, the upfront costs of such schemes and the uncertainty of future returns raise questions about the extent to which they can be sustained through private contributions. We investigate, through a theoretically motivated experiment, whether altruism, reciprocity, and self-interest can motivate forward investments. Specifically, we conduct a large-scale online experiment in which an overlapping sequence of players (representative generations) allocate an endowment between themselves and future, prior, or contemporary players. By varying both the action set and information available, we disentangle the mechanisms driving forward investments. We find that the ability to give back significantly increases willingness to give forward, even without information that would allow players to condition their actions on past behavior. This suggests that a preference for implicit reciprocity, rather than self-interested tit-for-tat strategies or explicit reciprocity, underlies this behavior.
