Matthew Rabin

About

Matthew Rabin is the Pershing Square Professor of Behavioral Economics in the Harvard Economics Department and Harvard Business School. His research focuses primarily on incorporating psychologically more realistic assumptions into empirically applicable formal economic theory. His current topics of interest include errors in statistical reasoning and the evolution of beliefs, effects of choice context on exhibited preferences, reference-dependent preferences, and errors people make in inference in market and learning settings. Before his current position, he spent 25 years at the University of California, Berkeley Economics Department. He received his PhD from MIT in 1989, the same year he joined the Berkeley faculty as an assistant professor. Professor Rabin is a member of the Russell Sage Foundation Behavioral Economics Roundtable and co-organizer of the Russell Sage Summer Institute in Behavioral Economics. His honors include the MacArthur Foundation Fellowship, the John Bates Clark Medal from the American Economic Association, and he is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Research topics

• Computer Science
• Econometrics
• Mathematics
• Microeconomics
• Machine Learning
• Artificial Intelligence
• Economics
• Psychology
• Statistics
• Cognitive psychology

Selected publications

• An Experiment on Time Preference and Misprediction in Unpleasant Tasks

  The Review of Economic Studies · 2018-05-10 · 162 citations

  articleSenior author

  We experimentally investigate the time-inconsistent taste for immediate gratification and future-preference misprediction. Across 7 weeks, 100 participants choose the number of unpleasant transcription tasks given various wages to complete immediately and at different future dates. Participants preferred 10–12% fewer tasks in the present compared to any future date, leading to an estimated $\beta $ of $0.83$. Comparing predictions with actual immediate-work choices provides evidence against subs…

  PublisherDOI

• Financial Markets Where Traders Neglect the Informational Content of Prices

  The Journal of Finance · 2018-10-08 · 156 citations

  articleOpen access

  ABSTRACT We model a financial market where some traders of a risky asset do not fully appreciate what prices convey about others' private information. Markets comprising solely such “cursed” traders generate more trade than those comprising solely rationals. Because rationals arbitrage away distortions caused by cursed traders, mixed markets can generate even more trade. Per‐trader volume in cursed markets increases with market size; volume may instead disappear when traders infer others' inform…

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• A Model of Relative Thinking

  The Review of Economic Studies · 2020 · 121 citations

  Abstract Fixed differences loom smaller when compared to large differences. We propose a model of relative thinking where a person weighs a given change along a consumption dimension by less when it is compared to bigger changes along that dimension. In deterministic settings, the model predicts context effects such as the attraction effect but predicts meaningful bounds on such effects driven by the intrinsic utility for the choices. In risky environments, a person is less likely to sacrifice u…

  PublisherDOI

• Channeled Attention and Stable Errors

  2018-05-29 · 50 citations

  article
  Publisher

• Belief Movement, Uncertainty Reduction, and Rational Updating

  The Quarterly Journal of Economics · 2021 · 47 citations

  Senior authorCorresponding

  Abstract When a Bayesian learns new information and changes her beliefs, she must on average become concomitantly more certain about the state of the world. Consequently, it is rare for a Bayesian to frequently shift beliefs substantially while remaining relatively uncertain, or, conversely, become very confident with relatively little belief movement. We formalize this intuition by developing specific measures of movement and uncertainty reduction given a Bayesian’s changing beliefs over time,…

  PublisherDOI

Recent grants

• Collaborative Research on Self-Control and Consumer Choice

  NSF · $119k · 2005–2008

Frequent coauthors

• Daniel J. Benjamin

  University of California, Los Angeles

  45 shared

• Erik Eyster

  University of California, Santa Barbara

  43 shared

• Ted O’Donoghue

  37 shared

• Don A. Moore

  27 shared

• Navin Kartik

  26 shared

• Andrea Galeotti

  26 shared

• Ori Heffetz

  24 shared

• George Loewenstein

  13 shared

Education

• Ph.D., Economics

  Harvard University

  1995

• B.A., Economics

  University of California, Berkeley

  1990

Awards & honors

• Alfred P. Sloan Research Fellow
• Graduate Economics Association Outstanding Teaching Award
• MacArthur Foundation Fellow
• Econometric Society Fellow
• John Bates Clark Medal from American Economic Association

Similar researchers at Harvard University

• Andrei Shleiferh-200
• Alberto Alesinah-161
• John Y. Campbellh-132