Working papers

Abstract We study the problem of maximizing Rényi entropy of order $2$ (equivalently, minimizing the index of coincidence) over the set of joint distributions with prescribed marginals. A closed-form optimizer is known under a feasibility condition on the marginals; we show that this condition is highly restrictive. We then provide an explicit construction of an optimal coupling for arbitrary marginals. Our approach characterizes the optimizer's structure and yields an iterative algorithm that terminates in finite time, returning an exact solution after at most $p-1$ updates, where $p$ is the number of rows.
Keywords Entropy maximization, Index of coincidence minimization, Coupling, Marginal constraints
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Abstract Using field data from an insurtech firm and a survey experiment, this paper studies health belief formation within couples. We document a strong gender asymmetry: Women increase critical illness insurance purchases for their husbands after negative health signals of COVID-19, hospital visits, and unhealthy lifestyles but do not adjust coverage for themselves, while men do not respond to either. Experimental evidence reveals pervasive health overconfidence and shows that women update on husbands’ negative health information but not their own, whereas men update neither. The findings highlight gendered belief updating and the importance of household decision-makers in financial choices.
Keywords Health overconfidence, Motivated beliefs, Gender differences, Insurance
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Abstract This paper studies whether expanding women’s decision-making authority within marriage affects female labor supply and girls’ human capital investment. We exploit a major reform of French marital law in 1966, which reallocated control over labor and financial decisions from husbands to wives while leaving divorce institutions unchanged. Using census and family survey data, we implement two complementary empirical strategies. First, exploiting the discontinuity in access to the new marital regime by date of marriage, we show that women married under the new regime are 7 percentage points more likely to be employed more than thirty years later, after childrearing constraints have largely passed. Second, using cohort- and gender-based exposure to the reform, we find that girls who are at key educational decision ages when the reform is announced complete more schooling and are 13 percent more likely to obtain a baccalauréat or a higher-education degree. These education gains translate into higher employment rates and access to higher-skilled occupations in adulthood.
Keywords Gender, Education, Labor supply, Marriage law, Intra-household decision making
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Abstract A subset of economic agents in a society is aware of the existence of an economic opportunity, and compete to exploit the opportunity. We study incentives to communicate about the existence of this economic opportunity when the exploitation of the opportunity by the winner generates externalities to other agents. We characterize the equilibria of the communication game and identify conditions under which more externalities generate more communication.
Keywords Opportunity, Strategic Communication, Externalities
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Abstract We study the almost sure convergence of the occupation measure of evolution models where mutation rates decrease over time. We show that if the mutation parameter vanishes at a controlled rate, then the empirical occupation measure converges almost surely to a specific invariant distribution of a limiting Markov chain. Our results are obtained through the analysis of a larger class of time-inhomogeneous Markov chains with finite state space, where the control on the mutation parameter is explained by the energy barrier of the limit process. Additionally, we derive an explicit convergence rate, explained also through the tree-optimality gap, that may be of independent interest.
Keywords Evolution models, Inhomogeneous Markov chain, Occupation measure, Energy barrier
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Abstract We study the almost sure convergence of the occupation measure of evolution models where mutation rates decrease over time. We show that if the mutation parameter vanishes at a controlled rate, then the empirical occupation measure converges almost surely to a specific invariant distribution of a limiting Markov chain. Our results are obtained through the analysis of a larger class of time-inhomogeneous Markov chains with finite states pace, where the control on the mutation parameter is explained by the energy barrier of the limit process. Additionally, we derive an explicit L1 convergence rate, explained through the tree-optimality gap, that may be of independent interest.
Keywords Evolution models, Inhomogeneous Markov chain, Occupation measure, Energy barrier
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Abstract This review examines how virtual embodiment interventions can inform economic research on inequality across social groups. These interventions, widely used in psychology and related disciplines, consist of using virtual reality to embody individuals in virtual bodies whose appearance can be experimentally manipulated. By varying key characteristics such as skin-tone, gender, or age, researchers caninduce the illusion of inhabiting the body of an outgroup member. I synthesize existing research on outgroup embodiment and provide both a practical guide to designing embodiment interventions and a critical assessment of the methodological trade-offs involved in their implementation. In addition, I discuss how combining embodimentinterventions with tools from experimental economics can serve two purposes: first, to advance research on social inequality by introducing new methods to study its socio-cognitive foundations; and second, to address open questions in the embodiment literature by testing whether “changing bodies” can change not only minds but also behavior.
Keywords Discrimination, Inequality, Prejudice, Identity, Virtual reality, Experimental economics
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Abstract We study choice among lotteries in which the decision maker chooses from a small library of decision rules. At each menu, the applied rule must make the realized choice a strict improvement under a dominance benchmark on perceived lotteries. We characterize the maximal Herfindahl-Hirschman concentration of rule shares over all locally admissible assignments, and diagnostics that distinguish rules that unify behavior across many menus from rules that mainly act as substitutes. We provide a MIQP formulation, a scalable heuristic, and a finite-sample permutation test of excess concentration relative to a menu-independent random-choice benchmark. Applied to the CPC18 dataset (N= 686 subjects, each making 500-700 repeated binary lottery choices), the mean rule concentration is 0.545, and 64.1% of subjects show excess rule concentration, rejecting menu-independent random choice at the 1% level. Concentration gains are primarily driven by modal-payoff focusing, salience-thinking, and regret-based comparisons.
Keywords Behavioral economics, Decision Theory, Revealed Preference
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Abstract We develop a new model of faith-based organizations (FBOs) as multi-sided platforms. Faithbased platforms (FBPs) offer two types of services. The first is a religious service that includes providing a moral narrative, giving guidance and counselling, and proposing access to the divine through prayer, meditation or rituals. The second is a networking service that allows members to connect with members who come for the religious service. By offeringboth types of service, FBPs benefit from the spill-over effect of the religious service, whichhelps to screen for trustworthy network members. FBPs are more profitable than organizations that only offer areligious service, often even per capita, and are generally larger in size. The optimal community size depends on the type of interactions the FBP fosters and how much it invests in the quality of the religious service. This can explain the diversity of FBOs that continue to thrive despite secular competition and some recent phenomena that cannot be fully explained by existing models of FBOs, such as the growth of religion in some urban settings and the emergence of religious communities that have grown very large without sacrificing high profits per member.
Keywords Religion, Faith-based organisations, Platforms
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