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DMITRY TAUBINSKY
Associate Professor of Economics, UC Berkeley
Research Associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research
Co-Editor at the Journal of Public Economics

I am an Associate Professor (with tenure) in the Department of Economics at UC Berkeley. I am also a Research Associate at the NBER, a co-Editor at the Journal of Public Economics, and serve on the Board of Editors at American Economic Journal: Economic Policy.

 

I conduct research in Behavioral and Public Economics, typically at the intersection of the two fields. See here for an overview that I've written about this intersection, and here for a podcast where I provide an overview of several key themes.

 

Using a combination of theory, field experiments, surveys, and quasi-experiments, I study topics such as: inattention to and misunderstanding of complex tax incentives; "sin taxes" on goods such as sugary drinks; consumer-facing energy policy and regulation; welfare effects of non-standard policy levers (e.g., "nudges", social recognition, reminders); and financial decision-making by low income populations (e.g., payday loan borrowers).

dmitry taubinsky

Office hours: I am on sabbatical at Stanford for the 24-25 academic year. Please email me for a Zoom or in-person meeting schedule link if you are a Berkeley or Stanford student, respectively.

Research

Publications

Working papers 

When do "Nudges" Increase Welfare? (with Hunt Allcott, Daniel Cohen, and William Morrison)

Cars Experiment Instructions   Drinks Experiment Instructions

Conditionally accepted at the American Economic Review

Welfare and the Act of Choosing (with B. Douglas Bernheim and Kristy Kim)

Study Instructions Appendix

Under revision for the Journal of Political Economy

Dynamic Preference "Reversals" and Time Inconsistency (with Philipp Strack)

Under revision for the American Economic Journal: Microeconomics

Beliefs About the Economy are Excessively Sensitive to Household-Level Shocks: Evidence from Linked Survey and Administrative Data (with Luigi Butera, Chen Lian, and Matteo Saccarola)​

Under revision for the Quarterly Journal of Economics

Understanding Expert Choices Using Decision Time (with David Card, Chenxi Jiang, and Stefano DellaVigna)

Failures of Contingent Reasoning in Annuitization Decisions (with Priscila de Oliveira and Erzo F.P. Luttmer)

Study Instructions

Biased Memory and Perceptions of Self Control (with Afras Sial and Justin Sydnor)

 

Publications and forthcoming

Sufficient Statistics for Nonlinear Tax Systems with General Across-Income Heterogeneity (with Antoine Ferey and Benjamin B. Lockwood)

Forthcoming in the American Economic Review

What Drives Demand for State-Run Lotteries? Evidence and Welfare Implications (with Hunt Allcott, Benjamin B. Lockwood, and Afras Sial)

Forthcoming in the Review of Economic Studies

Replication code

Is Attention Produced Optimally? Theory and Evidence from Experiments with Bandwidth Enhancements (with Erin Bronchetti, Judd Kessler, Ellen Magenheim, and Eric Zwick)

Econometrica, Vol 91, No 2 (2023): 669-707

Online Appendix    Experimental Instructions

Measuring the Welfare Effects of Shame and Pride (with Luigi Butera, Robert Metcalfe, and William Morrison)

American Economic Review, Vol 112, No 1 (2022): 122-168

"Click for Charity" experiment interface       Download QSF files for Prolific version     Slides    Online Appendix

 

Are High-Interest Loans Predatory? Theory and Evidence from Payday Lending (with Hunt Allcott, Josh Kim, and Jonathan Zinman)

Review of Economic Studies, Vol 89, Issue 3 (2022): 1041-1084

Replication code    Online Appendix

Who Chooses Commitment? Evidence and Welfare Implications (with Mariana Carrera, Heather Royer, Mark Stehr, and Justin Sydnor)

Review of Economic Studies, Vol 89, Issue 3 (2022): 1205–1244

Slides     Experimental Instructions    Online Appendix    Replication Code

Rules of Thumb and Attention Elasticities: Evidence from Under- and Overreaction to Taxes (with William Morrison)​

Review of Economics and Statistics, Vol 85, Issue 5 (2023): 1110-1127

Online Appendix

 

Measuring "Schmeduling" (with Alex Rees-Jones)

Review of Economic Studies, Vol 87, Issue 5 (2020): 2399-2438

Online Appendix      Survey Appendix       QSF file to run study 2        Replication Code

 

Regressive Sin Taxes, With an Application to the Optimal Soda Tax (with Hunt Allcott and Benjamin B. Lockwood)

Quarterly Journal of Economics, Vol 134, No 3 (2019): 1557-1626

Online Appendix      Replication Code

Attention Variation and Welfare: Theory and Evidence from a Tax Salience Experiment (with Alex Rees-Jones)

Review of Economic Studies, Vol. 85 (2018): 2462-2496

Online appendix      Replication Code

Evaluating Behaviorally-Motivated Policy: Experimental Evidence from the Lightbulb Market (with Hunt Allcott)

American Economic Review, Vol 105, No. 8 (August 2015), pages 2501-2538

Online Appendix      Replication Code

The Impact of Group Size on Giving Versus Demand for Redistribtion (with Johanna Mollerstrom and Avner Shlain) Forthcoming in the Journal of Public Economics

Designing Better Sugary Drinks Taxes (with Hunt Allcott, Anna H. Grummon, and Benjamin B. Lockwood).

Science, Vol 365, No 6457 (2019): 989-990.

Online appendix       Replication Code

 

Should We Tax Sugar Sweetened Beverages? An Overview of Theory and Evidence (with Hunt Allcott and Benjamin B. Lockwood)

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Vol 33, No 3 (2019): 202-227

Replication Code

The Limits of Simple Implementation Intentions: Evidence from a Field Experiment on Making Plans to Exercise (with Mariana Carrera, Heather Royer, Mark Stehr, and Justin Sydnor)

Journal of Health Economics, Vol. 62 (2018): 95-104.

Behavioral Public Economics (with B. Douglas Bernheim). In B. Douglas Bernheim, Stefano DellaVigna, and David Laibson (eds.) Handbook of Behavioral Economics, Volume 1, New York: Elsevier, (2018): 381-516.

Ramsey Strikes Back: Optimal Commodity Taxes and Redistribution in the Presence of Salience Effects. (with Hunt Allcott and Benjamin B. Lockwood)

American Economic Association Papers and Proceedings, 108 (2018): 88-92

Online appendix

What Makes a Price Fair? An Experimental Study of Transaction Experience and Endogenous Fairness Views (with Holger Herz)

Journal of the European Economic Association, Vol 16 , No. 2 (April 2018): 316-352

Online Appendix      Replication Code       Z-Tree files

Taxing Humans: Pitfalls of the Mechanism Design Approach and Potential Resolutions (with Alex Rees-Jones)

Tax Policy and The Economy, Vol 31, No. 1 (2018): 107-133

 

Tagging and Targeting of Energy Efficiency Subsidies (with Hunt Allcott and Christopher Knittel)

American Economic Review Papers and Proceedings  (2015)

Energy Policy with Externalities and Internalities (with Hunt Allcott and Sendhil Mullainathan)

Journal of Public Economics 112 (2014): 72-88

Replication Code

 

Network Architecture and the Left-Right Spectrum Art. 1. B.E. Journal of Theoretical Economics, Contributions 11 (2011).

 

The Allocation of Time in Decision-Making (with Chris Chabris, David Laibson, Carrie Morris, Jonathon Schuldt)

Journal of the European Economic Association 7, nos. 2-3 (April 2009): 628-637

 

Individual Laboratory-Measured Discount Rates Predict Field Behavior (with Chris Chabris, David Laibson, Carrie Morris, Jonathon Schuldt)

Journal of Risk and Uncertainty 37, no. 2 (2008): 237-269

Retired papers 

From Intentions to Actions: A Model and Experimental Evidence of Inattentive Choice (Retired 2014 draft)

 

Other writing 

Tax Psychology and the Timing of Charitable-Giving Deadlines (with Alex Rees-Jones)

A Cigarette Tax Has Saved Millions of Lives. A Soda Tax Could Too (with Hunt Allcott and Benjamin B. Lockwood)

Sin Taxes: Good, Better, Best  (with Hunt Allcott and Benjamin Lockwood)

Behavioral Public Economics Mini Course

In May 2022, Hunt Allcott, Doug Bernheim and I conducted the first "boot camp" in Behavioral Public Economics, which we continued in October 2023. You can find the 2022 lecture videos here, the 2023 lecture videos here, and slides and problem sets for general teaching here.

Working papers
In progress
Other writing
Behavioral Public Economics Teaching
Behavioral Public Economics Teaching
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