I am a behavioral economist who studies the cognitive foundations of beliefs, preferences, and decisions. My work applies economic methods to mental resources (especially attention) with the aim of generating novel insights into both individual minds and the institutions that bring them together: markets, organizations, and digital platforms. I am particularly interested in theory that deepens our understanding of artificial intelligence and other digital technologies.
Working Papers
Context and Communication [link]
The Economics of Attention
With George Loewenstein. Conditionally Accepted at The Journal of Economic Literature. [link]
Model Diversity and Dynamic Belief Formation [link]
Push and Pull: A Framework for Measuring Attentional Agency
With Shrey Jain and Nicholas Vincent. Under Consideration at AAAI'25. [link]
Undermining Mental Proof: How AI Can Make Cooperation Harder by Making Thinking Easier
With Simon DeDeo. Under Consideration at AAAI'25. [link]
Boredom and Flow: An Opportunity Cost Theory of Motivational Attention
With Nick Chater and George Loewenstein. [link]
Peer-Reviewed Publications
When and Why is Persuasion Hard? A Computational Complexity Result
Forthcoming at Proceedings of the AAAI/ACM Conference on Artificial Intelligence, Ethics, and Society, 2024. [link]
Cognition: A Study in Mental Economy
With George Loewenstein. Cognitive Science, 2023. [link]
The Motivational Processes of Sense-Making
With Nick Chater and George Loewenstein. In Schultz, Eric, Cogliati-Dezza, Irene, & Wu, Charley (eds.) The Drive for Knowledge, 2022. [link]
Curiosity and the Economics of Attention
With George Loewenstein. Current Opinion in Behavioral Sciences, 2020. [link]
From Probability to Consilience: How Explanatory Values Implement Bayesian Reasoning
With Simon DeDeo. Trends in Cognitive Science, 2020. [link]
Modeling Online Discourse With Coupled Distributed Topics
With Nikita Srivatsan and Taylor Berg-Kirkpatrick. Proceedings of the Conference on Empirical Methods in Natural Language Processing, 2018. [link]
Other Research
Further Analysis of Corporoate Bond Market Liquidity
With Tobias Adrian, Michael Flemming, and Erik Vogt. Liberty Street Economics, 2016. [link]
Corporate Bond Market Liquidity Redux: More Price-Based Evidence
With Tobias Adrian, Michael Flemming, and Erik Vogt. Liberty Street Economics, 2016. [link]
Did Third Avenue's Liquidation Reduce Corporate Bond Market Liquidity?
With Tobias Adrian, Michael Flemming, and Erik Vogt. Liberty Street Economics, 2016. [link]
Apparatus for Sealing Slide Bottom
World Patent No. Wo2010077975 A1, 2010. [link]