• Home
  • Contact
  • About Me
Paul Seabright

.com

  • Home
  • About Me
  • Books
  • Research
    • New Research
    • Working Papers
    • Published Journal Articles
    • Published Book Chapters
    • Current Research
    • Ideas for Future Research
    • Collaborators and Co-authors
    • Conferences
  • Other Writing
  • Lectures, Podcasts, Teaching
  • Coups de Coeur
    • Visual Artists
    • Places
    • Recommended Books
    • Blogs and links
    • Curiosities
  • Français

Browsing Category Uncategorized

← Older
Newer →

Research on behavioral decision-making

In the last few years I have undertaken a number of projects on individual decision-making under various influences – frames, nudges, narratives, channels of attention and group membership.

“Alcohol, Behavioral Norms and Sexual Violence on US College Campuses”, joint with Julia Hoefer, was issued on March 28th 2022 as a Discussion Paper by the CEPR.

The published papers from this line of work are:

“Conformity in mate choice, the overlooked social component of animal and human culture” (with Sabine Nobel, Antoine Jacquet, Guillaume Isabel, Arnaud Pocheville and Etienne Danchin), Biol. Rev. (2023), 98, pp. 132–149. 132 doi: 10.1111/brv.12899.

“Betting on the Lord: Lotteries and Religiosity in Haiti”(with Emmanuelle Auriol, Diego Delissaint, Maleke Fourati and Pepita Miquel-Florensa), World Development 144 (2021), https://doi.org/10.1016/j.worlddev.2021.105441.

“Favoring your in-group can harm both them and you: ethnicity and public goods provision in China”, with César Mantilla, Ling Zhou, Charlotte Wang, Donghui Yang and Suping Shen, Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization 185 (2021) 211–233. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jebo.2021.02.016.

“Honest signalling in trust interactions: smiles rated as genuine induce trust and signal higher earnings opportunities”, with Samuele Centorrino, Elodie Djemai, Astrid Hopfensitz, Manfred Milinski, Evolution and Human Behavior 36(1), (2015), 8-16. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.evolhumbehav.2014.08.001.

“How Does Ranking Affect User Choice in Online Search?” (with Mark Glick, Greg Richards and Margarita Sapozhnikov), Review of Industrial Organization 45 (2014), 99–119. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11151-014-9435-y

I am currently working with Selin Goksel, Assistant Professor at the University of Amsterdam, on a project involving the influence of narrative framing on the effectiveness of Bayesian updating.

Research on gender, networks and marriage markets

In the last few years I have undertaken a number of projects with co-authors Sylvie Borau, Jeanne Bovet, Guido Friebel, Marie Lalanne, Eva Raiber, Weiwei Ren, Peter Schwardmann and Charlotte Wang.

The published papers that have come out of this line of work are (the most recently published first):

What Do Parents Want? Parental Spousal Preferences in China, Economic Development and Cultural Change, 2023, https://doi.org/10.1086/717903. Preprint available here.

“The old boy network: are the professional networks of females executives less effective than men’s for advancing their careers?”, joint with Marie Lalanne, Journal of Institutional Economics (2022), pp. 1-20.  https://doi.org/10.1017/S1744137421000953.

“Gender Differences in Social Interactions”, joint with Guido Friebel, Marie Lalanne, Bernard Richter and Peter Schwardmann, Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization 186 (2021), 33-45, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jebo.2021.03.016.

“Parent-Offspring Conflict over Mate Choice: an experimental study in China”, joint with Jeanne Bovet, Eva Raiber, Weiwei Ren and Charlotte Wang, British Journal of Psychology (2018). doi:10.1111/bjop.12319.

“Honest signalling in trust interactions: smiles rated as genuine induce trust and signal higher earnings opportunities”, with Samuele Centorrino, Elodie Djemai, Astrid Hopfensitz, Manfred Milinski, Evolution and Human Behavior, 36(1), (2015), 8-16. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.evolhumbehav.2014.08.001.

“Do women have longer conversations? Telephone evidence of gendered communication strategies”, joint with Guido Friebel, Journal of Economic Psychology, 2011, doi:10.1016/j.joep.2010.12.008.

Working papers and those currently under submission include (not a complete list):

“Dating Choice and Career Choice: do the dating choices of ambitious women reinforce gender stereotypes in the labor market?”, with Jeanne Bovet and Sylvie Borau, under submission.

Betting on the Lord: Lotteries and Religiosity in Haiti

This paper, which is joint with Emmanuelle Auriol, Diego Delissaint, Maleke Fourati and Pepita Miguel-Florensa, is now published in World Development. You can download the paper here.

US churches’ response to Covid-19: Results from Facebook

This paper, which is joint with Eva Raiber, was distributed in pre-print form in CovidEconomics, issue 61 from CEPR:

https://cepr.org/content/covid-economics-vetted-and-real-time-papers-0

You can download it here.

New publication: Gender Differences in Social Interactions

This paper, which is joint with Guido Friebel, Marie Lalanne, Bernard Richter and Peter Schwardmann, has been published in the Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization (2021). You can download it here.

An earlier paper with Guido Friebel, entitled “Do women have longer conversations? Telephone evidence of gendered communication strategies” and published in the Journal of Economic Psychology in 2011, is available here.

New publication: Evaluating social contract theory in the light of evolutionary social science

This paper, which is joint with Jonathan Stieglitz and Karine Van Der Straeten, is forthcoming in Evolutionary Human Science. A non-copy-edited version is here.

Economics and infectious disease

Here are two of my published papers on the economics of infectious disease (both co-authored with Alice Mesnard):

Escaping epidemics through migration? Journal of Public Economics 2009.

Migration and the equilibrium prevalence of infectious diseases

Here are some press articles and blog posts I have written on Covid-19:

Easing lockdown: digital applications can help

God insures those who pay? Formal insurance and religious offerings in Ghana.

This paper, which is joint with Emmanuelle Auriol, Julie Lassébie, Amma Panin and Eva Raiber, is now published at the Quarterly Journal of Economics. It’s available on open access here:

https://academic.oup.com/qje/article/135/4/1799/5861944

We started this project back in 2015.

Here are some pictures of very colorful Ghanaian coffins:

Joint Ownership of Production Projects as a Commitment Device against Interest Groups

This paper with Nicoletta Berardi has been published in the Journal of Institutional and Theoretical Economics (2020). DOI: 10.1628/jite-2020-0027.

Parent-Offspring Conflict over Mate Choice: an experimental study in China

This paper, the result of our project with Jeanne Bovet, Eva Raiber, Weiwei Ren and Charlotte Wang, has come out in the British Journal of Psychology (2018). DOI:10.1111/bjop.12319

You can find the final paper here:

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/bjop.12319

You can find a near-final prepublication version here.

Abstract:

Both parents and offspring have evolved mating preferences that enable them to select mates and children‐in‐law to maximize their inclusive fitness. The theory of parent–offspring conflict predicts that preferences for potential mates may differ between parents and offspring: individuals are expected to value biological quality more in their own mates than in their offspring’s mates and to value investment potential more in their offspring’s mates than in their own mates. We tested this hypothesis in China using a naturalistic ‘marriage market’ where parents actively search for marital partners for their offspring. Parents gather at a public park to advertise the characteristics of their adult children, looking for a potential son or daughter‐in‐law. We presented 589 parents and young adults from the city of Kunming (Yunnan, China) with hypothetical mating candidates varying in their levels of income (proxy for investment potential) and physical attractiveness (proxy for biological quality). We found some evidence of a parent–offspring conflict over mate choice, but only in the case of daughters, who evaluated physical attractiveness as more important than parents. We also found an effect of the mating candidate’s sex, as physical attractiveness was deemed more valuable in a female potential mate by parents and offspring alike.

← Older
Newer →
  • Tags

    artists BBC behavioural economics book cambridge university press central europe church company of strangers competition policy Covid-19 darwin darwin college lecture economists epidemics experiments feminism fiction Français gender Haiti histoire historians History jointventure lockdown marriage markets narrative networks podcast princeton Psychology radio regions of europe religion récit sexual selection supply chain teaching technology trade tribune Trust videos war of the sexes whimsy
  • Connect with us:
  • © 2025 Paul Seabright
  • Powered by WordPress