Lasha Lanchava’s research while affiliated with Center for Economic Research and Graduate Education – Economics Institute and other places

Background: Past research linked Toxoplasma gondii (TG) infection in humans with neurological and mental disorders (e.g., schizophrenia, Alzheimer's disease and attention disorders), irregularities of the dopaminergic and testosterone system, and increased likelihood of being involved in traffic accidents. Methodology/principal findings: We test for an association between TG infection and financial decision-making (DM) using a case-control design in a sample of female Czech students (n = 79). We estimate each subject's risk attitude and loss aversion using an experimental economic task involving real monetary incentives. We find no significant evidence that either measure of decision-making is associated with TG infection. Conclusion: We were unable to find evidence of an association between TG infection and financial decision-making in females.

This paper investigates the impact on university enrollment of an unconditional cash transfer in Georgia, designed to help households living below the subsistence level. The program, introduced in 2005, selects recipients based upon a quantitative poverty threshold, which gives us the ability to implement a regression discontinuity design. We use data on program recipients from the Social Service Agency of Georgia (SSA) and on university admissions from the National Examination Center (NAEC) to create a single dataset and compare applicants who are above and below the threshold, while controlling for the main effect of the assignment variable itself. This paper is the first rigorous evaluation of this particular program. We find that being a program recipient significantly increases a student’s likelihood of university enrollment, by 6.3%. We also find a gender specific impact on enrollment. The impact is stronger for males; being a male child of a beneficiary family results in a 13.3% greater chance of university enrollment.

In response to the problem of shrinking birthrates in the country, in October 2007, the head of the Georgian Orthodox church announced that he would personally baptize any third and further baby born to Orthodox families from that time. This study uses the initiative as a natural experiment to explore the economic consequences of religious activity. This analysis uses individual level survey data from the Caucasus Resource Research Center (CRRC) Georgia on fertility before and after the initiative for Orthodox Christians (treatment group) and Non- Orthodox Christians (control group) population to identify the effect of the church leader’s promise on birth rates. Difference-in-differences estimation procedure is employed to examine the potential causal effect. This analysis does not find evidence that the church initiative had an effect on fertility.

This study is the first economic experiment that tests the economic significance of the theory of psychological reactance (Brehm, 1966). For this purpose, I design an economic experiment in which subjects are asked to express their valuation of two-choice situations. In one case, subjects are given absolute freedom, whereas in another, the extent of their freedom of choice is limited. As the experimental data revealed, subjects’ valuation of free and limited choice situations did not differ significantly. Thus, in the experiment, the subjects did not display signs of reactance. In the end, the potential reasons of why the subjects did not exhibit reactance are discussed. The lessons derived from this study may serve as a future guide for testing the economic significance of the reactance theory.