For most decisions, we rely on information encountered over the course of days, months or years. We consume this information in various forms, including abstract summaries of multiple data points - statistics - and contextualized anecdotes about individual instances - stories. This paper...

For many decisions, people rely on information received from others by word of mouth. How does the process of verbal transmission distort economic information? In our experiments, participants listen to audio recordings containing economic forecasts and are paid to accurately transmit the...

When people exchange ideas, both truths and falsehoods can proliferate. We study the role of explanations for the spread of truths and falsehoods in 15 financial decision tasks. We pay participants to record the reasoning behind each of their answers, providing over 6,900 unique verbal...

We study the long-run effects of contact with individuals from other regions in early adulthood on preferences, beliefs and national identity. We combine a natural experiment, the random assignment of male conscripts to different locations throughout Spain, with tailored survey data. Being...

We survey samples of German firms and households to document novel stylized facts about the extent of information frictions among the two groups. First, firms' expectations about macroeconomic variables are closer to expert forecasts and less dispersed than households', consistent with higher...

Dissent plays an important role in any society, but dissenters are often silenced through social sanctions. Beyond their persuasive effects, rationales providing arguments supporting dissenters' causes can increase the public expression of dissent by providing a "social cover" for voicing...

We provide evidence on the stories that people tell to explain a historically notable rise in inflation using samples of experts, U.S. households, and managers. We document substantial heterogeneity in narratives about the drivers of higher inflation rates. Experts put more emphasis on...

We leverage the small open economy Switzerland as a testing ground for basic premises of macroeconomic models of endogenous information acquisition, using tailored surveys of firms and households. First, we show that firms perceive a greater exposure to exchange rate movements than households,...

We conduct a natural field experiment with a major European party to test whether giving party supporters the opportunity to voice their opinions increases their engagement in the party's electoral campaign. In our experiment, the party asked a random subset of supporters for their opinions on...