Roland Benabou

Princeton University | PU · Department of Economics

Two distinct literatures have shown that people are averse to being rejected when requesting help, and to rejecting others’ requests for help; both parties prefer situations in which no ask was made to those in which an ask was made but rejected. We propose a game-theoretic framework that offers a parsimonious explanation for both phenomena and fur...

We investigate the effects of consumers’ environmental concerns and market competition on firms’ decisions to innovate in “clean” technologies. Agents care about their consumption and environmental footprint; firms pursue greener products to soften price competition. Acting as complements, these forces determine R&D, pollution, and welfare. We test...

We study the coevolution of religion, science and politics. We first uncover, in international and U.S. data, a robust negative relationship between religiosity and patents per capita. The model then combines: (i) scientific discoveries that raise productivity but sometimes erode religious beliefs; (ii) a government that allows innovations to diffu...

We analyze the costs and benefits of using social image to foster desirable behaviors. Each agent acts based on his intrinsic motivation, private assessment of the public good, and reputational concern for appearing prosocial. A Principal sets the general degree of privacy, observes the social outcome, and implements a policy: investment, subsidy,...

In this paper, we provide a perspective into the main ideas and findings emerging from the growing literature on motivated beliefs and reasoning. This perspective emphasizes that beliefs often fulfill important psychological and functional needs of the individual. Economically relevant examples include confidence in ones' abilities, moral self-este...

To analyze the impact of labor market competition on the structure of compensation, we embed multitasking and screening within a Hotelling framework. Competition for talent leads to an escalation of performance pay, shifting effort away from long-term investments, risk management, and cooperation. Efficiency losses can exceed those from a single pr...

Je présente les idées et résultats principaux émanant des travaux récents qui visent à incorporer les croyances motivées dans le champ de l’Économie, que ce soit au niveau individuel (excès de confiance, déni de réalité, aveuglement délibéré) ou social (pensée de groupe, moral d’équipe, exubérance et crises des marchés financiers). Pour ce faire, j...

In earlier work we identified a robust negative association between religiosity and patents per capita, holding across countries as well as US states. In this paper we relate 11 indicators of individual openness to innovation (e.g., attitudes toward science and technology, new versus old ideas, change, risk taking, agency, imagination, and independ...

The joint understanding of the cross section of individuals' total and equity savings is crucial regarding various policy issues. In particular, it is important to understand why lower-income households do not participate in the stock market, which reflects the so-called stock market participation puzzle. As it is demonstrated in the first part of...

This paper analyzes the impact of labor market competition and skill-biased technical change on the structure of compensation. The model combines multitasking and screening, embedded into a Hotelling-like framework. Competition for the most talented workers leads to an escalating reliance on performance pay and other high-powered incentives, thereb...

This paper analyzes the self-identification process and its role in motivation. We build a model of self-con…dence where people have imperfect knowledge about their ability, which in most tasks is a complement to effort in determining performance. Higher self-confidence thus enhances motivation, and this creates incentives for the manipulation of s...

We study a model where a capital provider learns from the price of a firm's security in deciding how much capital to provide for new investment. This feedback effect from the financial market to the investment decision gives rise to trading frenzies, where speculators all wish to trade like others, generating large pressure on prices. Coordination...

This paper analyzes how private decisions and public policies are shaped by personal and societal preferences ("values"), material or other explicit incentives ("laws") and social sanctions or rewards ("norms"). It first examines how honor, stigma and social norms arise from individuals' behaviors and inferences, and how they interact with material...

We develop a theory of moral behavior, individual and collective, based on a general model of identity in which people care about “who they are” and infer their own values from past choices. The model sheds light on many empirical puzzles inconsistent with earlier approaches. Identity investments respond nonmonotonically to acts or threats, and tab...

We investigate the effect of slavery on the current performances of the US economy. Over a cross section of counties, we find that slavery has no robust negative effect on current income per capita, while it raises current income inequality. In other words, those counties that displayed a higher share of slaves over the population are not necessari...

This paper studies preferences over menus of alternatives. A preference is monotonic when every menu is at least as good as any of its subsets. The main result is that any numerical representation for a monotonic preference can be written in minimax form. A minimax representation suggests a decision maker who faces uncertainty about her own future...

Society's demands for individual and corporate social responsibility as an alternative response to market and distributive failures are becoming increasingly prominent. We first draw on recent developments in the 'psychology and economics' of prosocial behavior to shed light on this trend, which reflects a complex interplay of genuine altruism, soc...

Similar countries often choose very di¤erent policies and specialize in very distinct indus-tries. This paper proposes a mechanism to explain policy diversity among similar countries from an open economy perspective. I study optimal policies in a two country model when poli-cies a¤ect determinants of trade patterns. I show that welfare gains from t...

This paper examines how a decisionmaker who is only partially aware of his tempta-tions learns about them over time. In facing temptations over time, individuals use their experiences to forecast future self-control problems and choose the appropriate level of com-mitment. I demonstrate that rational learning can be perpetually partial and need not...

We provide an assessment of the French ZEP (Zones d'Education Prioritaire), a program started in 1982 that channels additional resources to schools in disadvantaged areas and encourages the development of new teaching projects. Focusing on middle-schools, we first evaluate the impact of the ZEP status on resources, their utilization (teacher bonuse...

This article investigates collective denial and willful blindness in groups, organizations, and markets. Agents with anticipatory preferences, linked through an interaction structure, choose how to interpret and recall public signals about future prospects. Wishful thinking (denial of bad news) is shown to be contagious when it is harmful to others...

In this paper, I model certifers' choices of quality standards under various market and ownership structures. I consider an economic environment where adverse selection is so severe that no trade occurs in the absence of certification. Certification facilitates trade by alleviating information asymmetry; but a monopoly certifier sets an excessively...

This research examines the economic origins and spread of Islam and uncovers two empirical regularities. First, Muslim countries, virtual countries and ethnic groups, exhibit highly unequal regional agricultural endowments. Second, Muslim adherence is systematically larger along the pre-Islamic trade routes in the Old World. The theory argues that...

I develop a model of ideologies as collectively sustained (yet individually rational) distortions in beliefs concerning the proper scope of governments versus markets. In processing and interpreting signals of the efficacy of public and market provision of education, health insurance, pensions, etc., individuals optimally trade off the value of rem...

We examine the interactions between individual behavior, sentiments and the social con-tract in a model of rational voting over redistribution where individuals' self-esteem and relative esteem for others are endogenously determined. Individuals have moral values con-cerning work effort. They evaluate the behavior of others as well as their own beh...

We analyze social and economic phenomena involving beliefs which people value and invest in, for affective or functional reasons. Individuals are at times uncertain about their own 'deep values' and infer them from their past choices, which then come to define 'who they are'. Identity investments increase when information is scarce or when a greate...

I establish a number of baseline positive and normative results in the price theory of two-sided markets building on the work of Rochet and Tirole (2003). On the positive side, I introduce the notion of vulnerability of demand to separate previously confounded effects. I find that competition, price controls and subsidies always reduce the price le...

Given falling birth rates, ageing baby boomers approaching retirement age as well as a pension crisis in most advanced economies, understanding the characteristics of the labour supply function of the elderly have taken on a new significance. Even in developing countries, with labour surplus economies, this is a major issue as these poor countries...

This paper addresses the question how individual saving rates and equity hold-ings vary with income. The joint understanding of the cross section of individuals' total and equity savings is crucial regarding various policy issues. In particular, it is important to understand why lower-income households do not participate in the stock market, which...

This paper provides evidence that daughters make people more left-wing. Having sons, by contrast, makes them more right-wing. Parents, politicians and voters are probably not aware of this phenomenon --nor are social scientists. The paper discusses its economic and evolutionary roots. It also speculates on where research might lead. The paper ends...

This volume presents 28 essays on poverty by some of the leading experts in the field of economics. The book is divided into three sections, beginning with an essay about how poverty is measured. The first section is about the causes of poverty and its persistence, and the ideas range from the impact of colonialism and globalization to the problems...

International surveys reveal wide differences between the views held in different countries concerning the causes of wealth or poverty and the extent to which people are responsible for their own fate. At the same time, social ethnographies and experiments by psychologists demonstrate individuals' recurrent struggle with cognitive dissonance as the...

We develop a theory of prosocial behavior that combines heterogeneity in individual altruism and greed with concerns for social reputation or self-respect. Rewards or punishments (whether material or image-related) create doubt about the true motive for which good deeds are performed, and this ?overjustification effect? can induce a partial or even...

Social influences on self-control underlie both self-help groups and many peer interactions among youths. To understand these phenomena, we analyze how observing each other's behavior affects individuals’ ability to deal with their own impulses. These endogenous informational spillovers lead to either a unique “good news” equilibrium that ameliorat...

The maintenance and enhancement of self-esteem has always been identified as a fundamental human impulse. Philosophers, writers, educators and of course psychologists have all emphasized the crucial role played by self-image in motivation, affect and social interactions. The aim of this chapter is to bring these concerns into the realm of economic...

In 1982, pilot tests breaking with the idea of equal treatment were introduced in an attempt to do something about persistent school failure rates among the most disadvantaged pupils. These priority education zones (ZEPs) initially set up in a few regions were strengthened and extended in 1989 and 1990 and the measure has been regularly renewed sin...

The distribution of human capital and income lies at the center of a nexus of forces that shape a country's economic, institutional and technological structure. I develop here a unified model to analyze these interactions and their growth consequences. Five main issues are addressed. First, I identify the key factors that make both European-style “...

We build a theory of prosocial behaviour that combines heterogeneity in individual altruism and greed with concerns for social reputation or self-respect. The presence of rewards or punishments creates doubt as to the true motive for which good deeds are performed, and this ‘overjustification effect’ can result in a net crowding out of prosocial be...

This paper explores the consequences of cognitive dissonance, coupled with time-inconsistent preferences, in an intertemporal decision problem with two distinct goals: acting decisively on early information (vision) and adjusting flexibly to late information (flexibility). The decision maker considered here is capable of manipulating information to...

This paper explores the consequences of cognitive dissonance, coupled with time-inconsistent preferences, in an intertemporal decision problem with two distinct goals: acting decisively on early information (vision) and adjusting flexibly to late information (flexibility). The decision maker considered here is capable of manipulating information to...

[ger] Prioritäre Bildungsgebiete: welche Mittel für welche Ergebnisse? . Eine Evaluierung für den Zeitraum 1982-1992 . . Aufgrund des anhaltenden Schulversagens unter den am meisten benachteiligten Schülern wurde 1982 ein Versuch gestartet, der mit der Idee der Gleichbehandlung brach: Einrichtung prioritärer Bildungsgebiete in einigen Regionen; ein...

This paper provides a survey on studies that analyze the macroeconomic effects of intellectual property rights (IPR). The first part of this paper introduces different patent policy instruments and reviews their effects on R&D and economic growth. This part also discusses the distortionary effects and distributional consequences of IPR protection a...

I study the interactions between the distribution of human capital, technological choice, and redistributive institutions. I first ask what makes alternative social contracts such as a European-style "welfare state" and U.S.-style "laissez-faire" sustainable, and in particular how each is affected by skill-biased technical change. I then endogenize...

A collection of carefully selected contributions to behavioral economics from some of the leading international scholars in the field. Designed to fully complement Volume One, topics covered include preferences, behavioral game theory, motivated mental states and emotions and decision making.

The ZEP (zones d’éducation prioritaire), which started in 1982, are one French example ofpositive discrimination in the education system. This program aims to improve the students’achievement in the most disadvantaged schools. It gives more financial resources to schoolsin disadvantaged zones and it encourages them to develop specific teaching proj...

We study political activism by several interest groups with private signals. When their ideological distance to the policymaker is small, a "low-trust" regime prevails: agents frequently lobby even when it is unwarranted, taking advantage of the confirmation provided by others' activism; conversely, the policymaker responds only to generalized pres...

A central tenet of economics is that individuals respond to incentives. For psychologists and sociologists, in contrast, rewards and punishments are often counterproductive, because they undermine “intrinsic motivation”. We reconcile these two views, showing how performance incentives offered by an informed principal (manager, teacher, parent) can...

We show that Gul and Pesendorfer’s [Econometrica 69 (2001) 1403] representation result for preferences with temptation and self-control can be reexpressed in terms of a costly intrapersonal conflict between a Planner and Doer, as in Thaler and Shefrin [J. Political Econ. 89 (1981) 392] and psychologists’ standard view of self-control problems.

We study political activism by several agents (lobbyists, unions, etc.) who have private but imperfect policy-relevant signals, and seek to influence the decisions of a policy maker. When agents can share information and coordinate their actions, the equilibrium is shown to be equivalent to that with a single lobbyist, and even though activism conv...

This book is an in-depth discussion of rising inequalities in the western world. It explores the extent to which rising inequalities are the mechanical consequence of changes in economic fundamentals (such as changes in technological or demographic parameters), and to what extent they are the contingent consequences of country-specific and time-spe...

We analyze the value placed by rational agents on self-confidence, and the strategies employed in its pursuit. Confidence in one's abilities generally enhances motivation, making it a valuable asset for individuals with imperfect willpower. This demand for self-serving beliefs (which can also arise from hedonic or signaling motives) must be weighed...

This paper studies the effects of progressive income taxes and education finance in a dynamic heterogeneous-agent economy. Such redistributive policies entail distortions to labor supply and savings, but also serve as partial substitutes for missing credit and insurance markets. The resulting tradeoffs for growth and efficiency are explored, both t...

Much of the literature on time inconsistency has studied the external commitment devices that individuals use to address their self-control problems: tying oneself to the mast, staying away from temptation, holding illiquid assets, or “asking for controls ” from others. This paper, by contrast, focuses on internal commitment mechanisms or personal...

Time and value are related concepts that influence human behaviour. Although classical topics in human thinking throughout the ages, few environmental economic non-market valuation studies have attempted to link the two concepts. Economists have estimated non-market environmental values in monetary terms for over 30 years. This history of valuation...

We use panel data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (NLSY) to examine how body weight changes with age for a cohort moving through early adulthood, to investigate how the age-obesity gradient differs with socioeconomic status (SES) and to study channels for these SES disparities. Our results show first that weight increases with age an...

This paper explains why people value self-confidence, and how this concern shapes their informational strategies and intertemporal decisions. The theory has applications in areas as diverse as labour supply, savings and investment, or education and career decisions. People generally have imperfect knowledge about their abilities, which in most task...

Interest in economic mobility stems largely from its perceived role as an equalizer of opportunities, though not necessarily of outcomes. In this paper we show that this view leads very naturally to a methodology for the measurement of social mobility which has strong parallels with the theory of progressive taxation. We characterize opportunity–eq...

This paper studies the interactions between an individual’s self–esteem and his social environment, whether in the workplace, at school, or in personal relationships. A person generally has only imperfect knowledge of his own ability (or long–term payoff) in pursuing a task, and will undertake it only if he has sufficient self–confidence. People wh...

This paper develops a theory of inequality and the social contract aiming to explain how countries with similar economic and political "fundamentals" can sustain such different systems of social insurance, fiscal redistribution, and education finance as those, of the United States and Western Europe. With imperfect credit and insurance markets some...

Even people with income below average will not support high rates of redistribution, because of the prospect of upward mobility: they take into account the fact the they, or their children, may move up in the income distribution, and therefore be hurt by high tax rates. This "intuitive" hypothesis is commonly advanced as part of the explanation for...

Using two unifying models and an empirical exercise, this paper present and extends the main theories linking income distribution and growth, as well as the relevant empirical evidence. The first model integrates the political economy and imperfect capital markets theories. It allows for explicit departures from perfect democracy and embodies the t...

This paper seeks to explain the significant variations in the social contract observed across nations. It shows how countries with similar technologies and preferences, as well as equally democratic political systems, can sustain very different average and marginal tax rates. Similarly, it provides an explanation for the striking difference between...

This paper examines how socioeconomic stratification and alternative systems of education finance affect inequality and growth. Agents interact through local public goods or externalities (school funding, neighborhood effects) and economywide linkages (complementary skills, knowledge spillovers). Sorting families into homogeneous communities often...

This paper aims to explain the significant variations in the social contracts which can be observed across nations. It shows in particular how countries with similar technologies and preferences, as well as equally democratic political systems, can sustain very different avrage and marginal tax rates.

Using two unifying models and an empirical exercise, this paper presents and extends the main theories linking income distribution and growth, as well as the relevant empirical evidence. The first model integrates the political-economy and imperfect-capital-market theories. It allows for explicit departures from perfect democracy and embodies the t...

This paper examines how ambiguous notions such as "meritocracy" , "equality of opportunity" and "equality of outcomes" can be given a formal content and related to more standard economic concepts such as social mobility, income inequality, and efficiency.

A general model of community formation and human capital accumulation with social spillovers and decentralized school funding is used to analyse the causes of economic segregation and its consequences for equity and efficiency. Significant polarization arises from minor differences in endowments, preferences or access to capital markets. This makes...

Regional economic growth in Portugal has mainly been studied from the perspective of convergence with data ending by the early 2000’s. The country as a whole has stopped converging to the output levels of the richest European countries by this period and has also become one of the most unequal EU member-states in terms of income distribution in the...

Cet article analyse certains enjeux importants de la décentralisation: polarisation ville-banlieues, apparition de ghettos, et effets induits sur le système éducatif et la productivité. À la lumière de travaux récents sur la structure socio-économique des agglomérations urbaines et le rôle des interactions locales dans l'accumulation du capital hum...

Résumé Cet article analyse certains enjeux importants de la décentralisation : polarisa­tion ville-banlieues, apparition de ghettos, et effets induits sur le système éducatif et la productivité. À la lumière de travaux récents sur la structure socio-économi­que des agglomérations urbaines et le rôle des interactions locales dans l'accumulation du c...

[fre] Cet article analyse certains enjeux importants de la decentralisation : polarisa­tion ville-banlieues, apparition de ghettos, et effets induits sur le systeme educatif et la productivite. A la lumiere de travaux recents sur la structure socio-economi­que des agglomerations urbaines et le role des interactions locales dans l'accumulation du ca...

This paper develops a simple model of human capital accumulation and community formation by heterogeneous families, which provides an integrated framework for analysing the local determinants of inequality and growth. Five main conclusions emerge. First, minor differences in education technologies, preferences, or wealth, can lead to a high degree...

A recent body of work has demonstrated the crucial role played by local human capital externalities and local school funding in generating socio-economic segregation, persistent poverty, and low aggregate income or productivity growth. We present a simple model which captures the main insights from this literature, and prove three general propositi...

The asymptotic distributions of cointegration tests are approximated using the Gamma distribution. The tests considered are for the I(1), the conditional I(1), as well as the I(2) model. Formulae for the parameters of the Gamma distributions are derived from response surfaces. The resulting approximation is flexible, easy to implement and more accu...

This paper examines how economic stratification affects inequality and growth over time. It studies economies where heterogenous agents interact through local public goods or externalities (school funding, neighbourhood effects) and economy-wide linkages (complementary skills, knowledge spillovers). It compares growth and welfare when families are...

We model the links between residential choice, education, and productivity in a city composed of several communities. Local complementarities in human capital investment induce occupational segregation, although efficiency may require identical communities. Even when some asymmetry is optimal, equilibrium segregation can cause entire “ghettos” to d...

Aggregate cost uncertainty, arising from real shocks or unanticipated inflation, reduces the informativeness of prices by scrambling relative and aggregate variations. But when agents can acquire additional information, such increased noise may in fact lead them to become better informed, and price competition will intensify. We examine these issue...

Access to private information is shown to generate both the incentives and the ability to manipulate asset markets through strategically distorted announcements. The fact that privileged information is noisy interferes with the public's attempts to learn whether such announcements are honest; it allows opportunistic individuals to manipulate prices...

This paper explores different fiscal stimuli within a business cycle model with an endogenous number of firms. We demonstrate that a changing number of firms is a crucial dimension for evaluating fiscal policy since it accelerates the impacts of fiscal policy. In the presence of demand stimuli fiscal multipliers are small and the number of firms ma...