Modern communication technologies enable efficient exchange of information, but often sacrifice direct human interaction inherent in more traditional forms of communication. This raises the question of whether the lack of personal interaction induces individuals to exploit informational...

Remote work arrangements and increased virtual communication are commonplace. Particularly in organizations, virtual communication has become an essential tool for collaboration and exchanging information. Virtual communication channels, such as text or video messages, provide different levels...

In Switzerland, two key church institutions - the Conference of Swiss Bishops (CSB) and the Federation of Protestant Churches (FPC) - make public recommendations on how to vote for certain referenda. We leverage this unique situation to directly measure religious organizations ́power to shape...

We empirically assess whether hindsight bias has consequences on how citizens evaluate their political actors. Using an incentivized elicitation technique, we demonstrate that people systematically misremember their past policy preferences regarding how to best fight the Covid-19 pandemic. At...

This paper investigates the direct and indirect effects of others' beliefs on respondents' own beliefs and consumer sentiment. Conducting consumer surveys with randomized control trials (RCTs) in Thailand and Vietnam during the COVID-19 pandemic, we implement two information treatments. Both...

It is sometimes said that an effect of the COVID-19 pandemic will be heightened appreciation of the importance of scientific research and expertise. We test this hypothesis by examining how exposure to previous epidemics affected trust in science and scientists. Building on the “impressionable...

The study measures scientists’ polarization on social media and its impact on public perceptions of their credibility. Analyzing 98,000 scientists on Twitter from 2016 to 2022 reveals significant divergence in expressed political opinions. An experiment assesses the impact of online political...

We investigate how heterogeneous social preferences affect the communication of painful information in social relationships. We characterize the existence conditions for a pooling equilibrium in which individuals conceal painful information because revealing the latter would signal that they are...

We study the effects of improvements in market transparency on eBay on seller exit and continuing sellers' behavior. An improvement in market transparency by reducing strategic bias in buyer ratings led to a significant increase in buyer valuation especially of sellers rated poorly prior to the...