Judd B. Kessler

For a current list of my publications and working papers, please visit my personal website.

• Ashley Litwin, Judd B. Kessler, Muriel Niederle, Hannu Kivimaki, Please Take A Minute: How Prosocial Choices Change with Deliberation. Abstract

  People often make decisions quickly when presented with a choice. Are their intuitive answers a good approximation of what they would choose if they took more time to decide? We explore how individuals’ choices change with deliberation and find that later choices systematically differ from early ones. We focus on prosocial decisions and find that individuals’ choices respond more to social efficiency as they deliberate over the course of a minute. Our results call into question the use of revealed preference for welfare when prosocial choices are made quickly and provide guidance to policy makers and charities.

• Christine Exley, Raymond Fisman, Judd B. Kessler, Louis-Pierre Lepage, Xiaomeng Li, Corinne Low, Mattie Toma, Basit Zafar (Working), Information-Optional Policies and the Gender Concealment Gap. Abstract

  We analyze data from two universities that allowed students to replace a letter grade with “credit” on their transcript. At both schools, we observe a significant and substantial gender concealment gap: women are less likely than men to conceal grades, particularly grades that would harm their GPA. This gender concealment gap produces differential GPA gains from the policy with men benefiting nearly 50% more than women. Additional complementary data, including surveys and experiments with students and employers, suggest why women may conceal less: women may expect observers to have more negative inferences about their concealed grades.

• Judd B. Kessler and Corinne Low (2024), Lowering the Playing Field: Discrimination through Sequential Spillover Effects, The Review of Economics and Statistics, 00 (), pp. 1-28. Abstract
  We document a new way that discrimination operates: through sequential spillover effects. Employers in an incentivized resume rating experiment evaluate a sequence of hypothetical candidates with randomly assigned characteristics. Candidates are rated worse when following white men than when following women or minorities. Exploring the mechanisms, we find that spillover effects are inversely related to direct bias. When reviewing high-quality resumes or recruiting in STEM industries, employers directly favor white men and display no spillover effect. For low-quality resumes or non-STEM industries, we find no direct bias but a strong spillover effect. Results suggest that discrimination arises in subtle ways.
• Judd B. Kessler, Corinne Low, Monica Singhal (2021), Social Policy Instruments and the Compliance Environment, Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization, 192 (), pp. 248-267. Abstract
  Two types of social policy instruments — making group behavior public to the individual and making individual behavior public to the group — are used by charities to encourage giving and by policymakers to incentivize other prosocial behaviors. However, models of social norms suggest that the effects of such interventions are theoretically ambiguous and may even backfire in low-compliance environments. We examine these questions in the context of a public good game. Exploiting a unique experimental design, we show that initial contributors’ giving decisions are sensitive to the behavior of the group while initial non-contributors’ decisions are not. In contrast, making own behavior public to the group increases contributions for all group types, even those comprised entirely of initial non-contributors. These findings suggest that publicizing contributions causes individuals to respond to a common understanding of prosocial behavior that is not defined solely by the initial group norm.
• Erika Kirgios, Edward Chang, Emma E. Levine, Katherine L. Milkman, Judd B. Kessler (2020), Forgoing Earned Incentives to Signal Pure Motives, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 117 (29), pp. 16891-16897. Abstract

  Financial incentives can spark behavior change but often damage recipients’ self-image. We designed and tested an intervention that allows organizations and individuals to resolve this tension. We motivated actors with financial rewards and then gave them the opportunity to forgo those rewards to signal their past actions were intrinsically motivated. We propose that actors who forgo financial rewards engage in “motivation laundering,” passing up payments earned for an incentivized action to retroactively signal that their motivations were intrinsic. Our intervention has the potential to leave organizations and incentivized individuals better off: Financial rewards help actors build better habits, and motivation laundering allows them to boost their self-image, while giving organizations opportunities to lower incentive program costs.

• Judd B. Kessler, Corinne Low, Colin Sullivan (2019), Incentivized Resume Rating: Eliciting Employer Preferences without Deception, American Economic Review, 109 (11), pp. 3713-3744. Abstract

  We introduce a new experimental paradigm to evaluate employer preferences, called Incentivized Resume Rating (IRR). Employers evaluate resumes they know to be hypothetical in order to be matched with real job seekers, preserving incentives while avoiding the deception necessary in audit studies. We deploy IRR with employers recruiting college seniors from a prestigious school, randomizing human capital characteristics and demographics of hypothetical candidates. We measure both employer preferences for candidates and employer beliefs about the likelihood candidates will accept job offers, avoiding a typical confound in audit studies. We discuss the costs, benefits, and future applications of this new methodology.

• Judd B. Kessler, Katherine L. Milkman, C. Yiwei Zhang (2019), Getting the Rich and Powerful to Give, Management Science, 65 (9), pp. 4049-4062. Abstract

  What motivates the rich and powerful to exhibit generosity? We explore this important question in a large field experiment. We solicit donations from 32,174 alumni of an Ivy League university, including thousands of rich and powerful alumni. Consistent with past psychology research, we find that the rich and powerful respond dramatically, and differently than others, to being given a sense of agency over the use of donated funds.Gifts from rich and powerful alumni increase by 100%–350% when they are given a sense of agency. This response arises primarily on the intensive margin with no effect on the likelihood of donating. Results suggest that motivating the rich and powerful to act may require tailored interventions.

• Jennie Huang, Judd B. Kessler, Muriel Niederle (Draft), The Value of Information and the Role of Fairness in Bargaining. Abstract

  Research from the last three decades suggests that fairness plays an important role in economic transactions. However, the vast majority of this evidence investigates behavior in a full-information environment. We develop a new experimental paradigm—which nests the widely used Ultimatum Game—to show that the role of fairness in economic transactions depends fundamentally on the information structure. We find that when transacting agents are less informed, inequality increases. In the absence of information, proposers give less-fair offers and report believing that responders will accept them. Responders do, in fact, accept less-fair offers when proposers are informed, suggesting that responders are concerned about their social image or proposers’ intentions.

• Amanda Chuan, Judd B. Kessler, Katherine L. Milkman (2018), A Field Study of Charitable Giving Reveals that Reciprocity Decays over Time, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 155 (8), pp. 1766-1771. Abstract

  We examine how reciprocity changes over time by studying a large quasi-experiment in the field. Specifically, we analyze administrative data from a university hospital system. The data include information about over 18,000 donation requests made by the hospital system via mail to a set of its former patients in the four months following their first hospital visit. We exploit quasi-experimental variation in the timing of solicitation mailings relative to patient hospital visits and find that an extra 30-day delay between the provision of medical care and a donation solicitation decreases the likelihood of a donation by 30%. Our findings have important implications for models of economic behavior, which currently fail to incorporate reciprocity’s sensitivity to time. The fact that reciprocal behavior decays rapidly as time passes also suggests the importance of capitalizing quickly on opportunities to benefit from a quid pro quo.

  Description

  Datasets in "A Field Study of Charitable Giving Reveals that Reciprocity Decays over Time"

    Dataset regression_deid is the deidentified dataset used to create main and supplemental regression tables (Fig. 1, Tables 3,  S1-S3, S5-S7, and S10). Dataset regression_deidexp is the deidentified dataset used to create regression tables exploring the role of patient experience (tables S8 and S9). Dataset sumstat_deid is the deidentified dataset used to create summary statistics tables (Tables 1, 2, S2, and S4).
  Related
  Links

  Radio interview with Knowledge@Wharton
• Ezekiel J. Emanuel, P. Ubel, Judd B. Kessler, G. Meyer, R. Muller, Amol Navathe, P. Patel, R. Pearl, MB Rosenthal, L. Sacks, AP Sen, P. Sherman, Kevin Volpp (2015), Using Behavioral Economics to Design Physician Incentives that Deliver High Value Care, Annals of Internal Medicine, 24 (), pp. 1-7.
• All Research from Judd B. Kessler »

Spring 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022 – BEPP 220/620: “Behavioral Economics, Markets and Public Policy” (Undergraduate and MBA)

Spring 2019, Fall 2021 – BEPP 904 “Experimental Economics” (PhD)

Fall 2012, 2013, 2015, 2017 – MGEC 611/612: “Managerial Economics” (MBA)

Spring 2012 – BPUB 250: “Managerial Economics” (Undergraduate)

Current Courses

• BEPP2200 - Behavioral Economics, Markets, And Public Policy

  Behavioral economics has revealed a variety of systematic ways in which people deviate from being perfectly selfish, rational, optimizing agents. These findings have important implications for government policy and firm behavior. This course will explore these implications by answering two main questions: (1) what does behavorial economics imply for when and how the government should intervene in markets? (2) What does behavioral economics imply for firms' pricing and production decisions? The course will present the standard economic approaches to answering these questions and then explore how answers change when we consider that people act in behavioral ways. Towards the end of the course, we will investigate specific policy questions, allowing us to debate solutions while hearing from policy makers operating in a world of behavioral agents.

  BEPP2200001 ( Syllabus )

• BEPP6200 - Behavioral Economics, Markets And Public Policy

  Behavioral economics has revealed a variety of systematic ways in which people deviate from being perfectly selfish, rational, optimizing agents. These findings have important implications for government policy and firm behavior. This course will explore these implications by answering two main questions: (1) what does behavioral economics imply for when and how the government should intervene in markets? (2) What does behavioral economics imply for firms' pricing and production decisions? The course will present the standard economic approaches to answering these questions and then explore how answers change when we consider that people act in behavioral ways. Towards the end of the course, we will investigate specific policy questions, allowing us to debate solutions while hearing from policy makers operating in a world of behavioral agents.

  BEPP6200001 ( Syllabus )

Past Courses

• BEPP0001 - Intro Behavioral Economics

  Governments and firms set policy in a world of behavioral agents. This course will present economic approaches to these policy problems when individuals act in behavioral ways. Readings will be newspaper articles that will be discussed in class. Assignments -- three problem sets -- will include qualitative and quantitative analysis.

• BEPP2200 - Behavioral Economics

  Behavioral economics has revealed a variety of systematic ways in which people deviate from being perfectly selfish, rational, optimizing agents. These findings have important implications for government policy and firm behavior. This course will explore these implications by answering two main questions: (1) what does behavorial economics imply for when and how the government should intervene in markets? (2) What does behavioral economics imply for firms' pricing and production decisions? The course will present the standard economic approaches to answering these questions and then explore how answers change when we consider that people act in behavioral ways. Towards the end of the course, we will investigate specific policy questions, allowing us to debate solutions while hearing from policy makers operating in a world of behavioral agents.

• BEPP2990 - Independent Study

• BEPP6110 - Microeconomics for Managers

  This course covers microeconomic foundations for understanding business decision-making. The first unit, “Operating a Firm,” covers demand estimation, cost minimization, and pricing with market power. Unit two, “Markets and Equilibrium,” covers supply and demand, market equilibrium, taxes and tax incidence, and externalities. Unit three presents an introduction to game theory, including simultaneous-move and sequential games. Students are expected to have mastered these materials before enrolling in the second-quarter course, Microeconomics for Managers: Advanced Applications.

• BEPP6120 - Microeconomics for Mgrs Advanc

  This course will cover the economic foundations of business strategy and decision-making in market environments with other strategic actors and less than full information, as well as advanced pricing strategies. Topics include oligopoly models of market competition, creation, and protection, sophisticated pricing strategies for consumers with different valuations or consumers who buy multiple units (e.g. price discrimination, bundling, two-part tariffs), strategies for managing risk and making decisions under uncertainty, asymmetric information and its consequences for markets, and finally moral hazard and principle-agent theory with application to incentive contacts.

• BEPP6200 - Behavioral Econ, Markets

  Behavioral economics has revealed a variety of systematic ways in which people deviate from being perfectly selfish, rational, optimizing agents. These findings have important implications for government policy and firm behavior. This course will explore these implications by answering two main questions: (1) what does behavioral economics imply for when and how the government should intervene in markets? (2) What does behavioral economics imply for firms' pricing and production decisions? The course will present the standard economic approaches to answering these questions and then explore how answers change when we consider that people act in behavioral ways. Towards the end of the course, we will investigate specific policy questions, allowing us to debate solutions while hearing from policy makers operating in a world of behavioral agents.

• BEPP9040 - Experimental Economics

  This course will help prepare you to run your own economics laboratory and field experiments. Experimental methods have been widely adopted by economists to develop new insights, and some economic theories and hypotheses are uniquely well-suited for testing with experimental tools and data. Achieving high internal and external validity requires careful experimental design. Substantive areas of application in the course will include market equilibrium, asset bubbles, learning in games, public good provision, and labor market relationships. Additional topics may include biases in individual decision-making; field experiments in development economics; and happiness, neuroeconomics, and behavioral/experimental welfare economics. Economists' typical interests in strategic and market-based interactions raise particular methodological challenges and opportunities.

• OIDD9040 - Experimental Economics

  This course will help prepare you to run your own economics laboratory and field experiments. Experimental methods have been widely adopted by economists to develop new insights, and some economic theories and hypotheses are uniquely well-suited for testing with experimental tools and data. Achieving high internal and external validity requires careful experimental design. Substantive areas of application in the course will include market equilibrium, asset bubbles, learning in games, public good provision, and labor market relationships. Additional topics may include biases in individual decision-making; field experiments in development economics; and happiness, neuroeconomics, and behavioral/experimental welfare economics. Economists' typical interests in strategic and market-based interactions raise particular methodological challenges and opportunities.

• Vernon L. Smith Ascending Scholar Prize, 2021
• Named "30 under 30" in Law and Policy by Forbes Magazine, 2012
• Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and the Donaghue Foundation Pioneer Portfolio Grant Recipient, 2012 Description

  Project Title: “Using Behavioral Economics to Promote Medication Adherence and Habit Formation” (with Dmitry Taubinsky and Eric Zwick)

  Total Received for Project: $150,400

  • Robert Wood Johnson Foundation’s Pioneer Portfolio and the Donaghue Foundation ($100,000)
  • Sub-Award from Laibson/Madrian Grant ($30,000)
  • Lab for Economic Applications and Policy at Harvard ($12,000)
  • Penn-CMU Roybal Grant ($8,400)
• Roger Martin Award for Excellence in Business Economics, Harvard Business School, 2011
• National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship, 2005

• The job search, AM New York - 03/03/2016
• One way to boost organ donations: Just keep asking, The Washington Post - 08/18/2014
• The Power of Broadcasting Benevolence, Wharton Blog Network - 07/31/2012
• Facebook’s Organ Donation Success Needs Follow-Up, Bloomberg - 05/07/2012
• 30 Under 30 - Law & Policy, Forbes - 12/19/2011
• Researchers look to optimize donations in the United States, The Daily Pennsylvanian - 10/24/2011
• Something for the weekend, Financial Times - 10/21/2011
• Pay to Play: Should Registered Organ Donors Get Priority as Recipients?, Freakonomics Blog - 08/23/2011

Knowledge @ Wharton

• Affordable Care Act Subsidies, Coverage Losses, and What Comes Next, Knowledge @ Wharton - 01/23/2026
• CEO of GrowthLoop, Chris O’Neill, Knowledge @ Wharton - 01/22/2026
• The Unintended Consequences of Affordable Housing Lotteries, Knowledge @ Wharton - 01/21/2026
• Inside College Football’s Data-Driven Evolution and Decision-Making, Knowledge @ Wharton - 01/21/2026
• Nobel Laureate Richard Thaler’s New Take on the Classic ‘Winner’s Curse’, Knowledge @ Wharton - 01/20/2026
• Why AI Disclosure Matters at Every Level, Knowledge @ Wharton - 01/20/2026
• Who Gets Replaced by AI and Why?, Knowledge @ Wharton - 01/20/2026
• Real Estate and Housing Market Outlook | Benjamin Keys, Knowledge @ Wharton - 01/20/2026
• Inside Saks Global’s Bankruptcy and the Future of Luxury Retail, Knowledge @ Wharton - 01/16/2026
• CMO of HelloFresh, Jorge Samayoa, Knowledge @ Wharton - 01/15/2026