About

Emel Filiz-Ozbay received her PhD with distinction from Columbia University in 2007 and joined the University of Maryland faculty in the same year. Her fields of interest include Experimental and Behavioral Economics, Market Design, and Contract Theory. She studies incentives, how they relate to the behavioral biases of agents, and welfare-enhancing choice architecture. She teaches Behavioral and Experimental Economics and Microeconomic Theory at both graduate and undergraduate levels at the University of Maryland. Her research has been published in leading economics journals such as the American Economic Review, Journal of Political Economy, Management Science, Journal of European Economic Association, and Journal of Economic Theory. She has served as a Co-Editor at Economic Inquiry, Co-Editor-in-Chief at Mathematical Social Sciences, and is currently an Associate Editor at Management Science.

Selected publications

• Choosing to search: choice with a default option

  Experimental Economics · 2025-03-01

  articleOpen accessCorresponding

  Abstract In the presence of a default option, the optimal search rule for an agent with a reference-dependent utility and a search cost predicts: (i) the default increases the reservation utility due to the reference effect , leading to a better choice, and (ii) those with higher reservation utility will self-select into search and are more likely to find a superior option. Our experiments document the presence of both effects. Those who reject the default are likely to find higher-ranked options in their active search, supporting the self-selection effect. Even when the self-selection channel is shut down, the reference effect remains.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• The private solution trap in collective action problems across 34 nations

  2024-10-23

  preprintOpen access

  Collective action problems emerge when individual incentives and group interests are misaligned, as in the case of climate change. Individuals involved in these problems are often considered to have two options: contribute towards public solutions such as global mitigation or free ride. However, many collective action problems today involve a third option of investing in a ‘private solution’ such as local adaptation. The availability of this third option can lead to a private solution trap whereby private solutions are adopted, collectively optimal public solutions are not provided, and wealth inequality increases. We investigate the private solution trap with a game featuring private and public solutions, wealth inequality determined by luck or merit, and participants from 34 countries. We find that the joint existence of private solutions and wealth inequality has a consistent effect across countries: participants given higher wealth adopt private solutions almost twice as often as those given lower wealth, regardless of the origin of their wealth, and they contribute proportionally less towards public solutions. Wealth inequality increases in every country and those with lower wealth are often left unprotected as public solutions are not provided. Harmony cultural values are negatively associated with private solution adoption and positively associated with public solution provision across countries, in contrast to hierarchy values. We also identify two universal pathways towards public solution provision: early contributions and conditional cooperation. Our findings highlight the ubiquity of the private solution trap, its cultural underpinnings, and its potential consequences for global collective action problems.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Choosing to search: Choice with a default option

  SSRN Electronic Journal · 2024-01-01 · 1 citations

  preprintOpen access
  PublisherDOI

• Assessing private solutions to collective action problems in a 34-nation study

  2024-10-23

  preprintOpen access

  Collective action problems emerge when individual incentives and group interests are misaligned, as in the case of climate change. Individuals involved in collective action problems are often considered to have two options: contribute towards a public solution or free-ride. But they might also choose a third option of investing in a private solution such as local climate change adaptation. Here we introduce a collective action game featuring wealth inequality caused by luck or merit and both public and private solutions with participants from 34 countries. We show that the joint existence of wealth inequality and private solutions has a consistent effect across countries: participants endowed with higher income choose the private solution almost twice as often as those endowed with lower income; and this finding cannot be explained by different sources of wealth (luck vs. merit) or by cultural or economic factors. We also show that preferences for private solutions undermine support for public solutions, resulting in wealth inequality increasing in every country. In contrast, we identify two universal pathways to successful public solution provision: early contributions to public solutions and conditional cooperation. Our findings highlight the ubiquity of the ‘private solution problem’ and its potential consequences for global collective action problems.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Assessing private solutions to collective action problems in a 34-nation study

  Research Square · 2024-11-15

  preprintOpen access
  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Progressive Random Choice

  Journal of Political Economy · 2022-07-15 · 12 citations

  article1st authorCorresponding

  We introduce a flexible framework to study probabilistic choice that accommodates heterogeneous types and bounded rationality. We provide a novel progressive structure for the heterogeneous types to capture heterogeneity due to varying levels of a behavioral trait. Given an order of alternatives, our progressive structure sorts the types by the extent to which they align with this order. Unlike the random-utility model, our model uniquely identifies the heterogeneity, allowing policy makers to perform an improved welfare analysis. As a showcase, we provide characterization of a well-studied type of bounded rationality: “less-is-more.” In addition, we provide conditions for unique identification of the underlying order for the less-is-more structure.

  PublisherDOI

• Comparing ambiguous urns with different sizes

  Journal of Economic Theory · 2021-02-25 · 2 citations

  article1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• Effects of the Menu of Loan Contracts on Borrower Behavior

  Management Science · 2021-03-22 · 4 citations

  article

  We study how the menu of contracts presented to a decision maker—including contracts she may be precluded from choosing—affects her choice of remunerative but risky actions relative to lower paying, less risky alternatives. We do this through a series of laboratory experiments modeled after the loan repayment options offered to U.S. student borrowers, analyzing borrowers’ task (career) choices in settings that vary the menu of available and unavailable loan repayment plans and knowledge of unavailable options. In these experiments, we observe behavior that is inconsistent with predictions from standard economic models in which agents can easily make complex decisions and each alternative in a choice set is evaluated independently of other potential options. Instead, we provide evidence that expanding the menu of choices or making an agent aware of choices that she has been denied can affect how a contract is valued. Our empirical findings are most consistent with behavioral models that allow for anticipated regret over a choice that turns out to be suboptimal ex post or preferences for simplicity and gratitude for being unburdened from having to make a choice. This paper was accepted by Yan Chen, decision analysis.

  PublisherDOI

• Your Success Is My Motivation

  SSRN Electronic Journal · 2020-01-01

  articleOpen accessSenior author
  PublisherDOI

• Framing effects, earnings expectations, and the design of student loan repayment schemes

  Journal of Public Economics · 2020-02-07 · 45 citations

  article
  PublisherDOI

Labs

• Filiz-Ozbay, Emel | ECONPI