I’m motivated by fairness and equality, whether it is within society, across generations, or in the world of business. I believe that fairness is critical in enabling cooperation — the bedrock for society to flourish, organisations to succeed, and the economy to grow. Through my research, I hope to have real-world impact: I work in close collaboration with organisational leaders and policy makers on translating research findings into relevant actions to improve governments, charities, and businesses.
If you are interested to find out more about my motivation for what I work on, I have discussed the impact of behavioural science and AI in an interview with Money on the Mind, climate justice in an interview with Springer Nature, and inclusion and gender equality in on a podcast interview with the Austria’s Agency for Education and Internationalisation.
Are you looking for my academic publications behind this research? Click here.
Or are you interested in my articles aimed at senior leaders and managers? Click here.
Intergenerational public goods and environmental economics
I am interested in ways in which individuals, groups and entire generations can cooperate so that future generations inherit a planet full of opportunities, rich in biodiversity, and with resources to maintain Planet Earth into the far future. There is hardly a more pressing issue than addressing climate change, preserving our planet’s resources, and adapting our behaviours to making the necessary positive changes happen. But this area of research also tackles more unorthodox and abstract risks – for example, how do we guard against potential existential risk from new technologies as such extremely powerful AI?
Illustrative research examples:
Our paper “Cooperating with the future” published in Nature (2014) lays bare the challenge of intergenerational cooperation: when there is no way to reciprocate previous generations’ kind (or unkind) behaviour, how do we establish and maintain sustainable behaviours? In this paper, we focus on the role of institutions—in particular, democracy—in maintaining intergenerational cooperation. If you are interested to learn more, there’s a short video and a helpful commentary that tells you more about this work.
In other work, we study how genetic and familial relationships might be a way to encourage more sustainable behaviour. In ”Climate action for (my) children” in Environmental and Resource Economics (2021), we show that parents are more likely to invest in sustainable decisions (such as planting trees for future generations) when their own children are watching them make this decision.
Evolution of cooperation and altruism
Have you ever asked yourself why people give to charity (or why they don’t)? Or how incredible it is that we help each other in moments of need? As it turns out, the answers to these questions — from both economic and evolutionary perspectives — are not as straightforward as some might intuitively think: why would organisms, such as humans, evolve to be kind, generous, and sharing – that is, help someone else at their own cost? This area of research aims at understanding the basis for humans’ incredible ability, as a species, to cooperate, both through the use of mathematical models as well as with practical applications to motivate people being selfless and more cooperative with others. Reigning in our selfish impulses and promoting our generous side is essential for our own survival as a species and, possibly, of all species.
Illustrative research examples:
Our Nature paper “Social dilemmas among unequals” (2019) studies how cooperation is affected by multiple inequalities. Using evolutionary game theory, we show that inequalities in incomes and productivities can undermine the evolution of cooperation – but there are conditions when things can get better too. An experiment illustrates some of these key take-aways.
Theory makes necessary but often simplifying assumptions: when it comes to cooperation, one of those assumptions is that people interact with each other one at a time. But the real-world is more complex than that. Our paper “Evolution of cooperation in multichannel games” in Nature Communications (2020) explores cooperation across multiple interactions.
Inequality and poverty reduction
While our societies, on average, have grown wealthier than ever before in human history, that wealth has recently also become more divided. What are the consequences of growing inequality of income and wealth? This research agenda studies both how we comprehensively measure inequality and how people perceive inequality in their society. This work also investigates behaviours and attitudes at the extremes of the income spectrum, among the poorest and the richest spheres of society. Ultimately, this work aims to provide policy-makers with answers to hard questions, such as how we can eradicate poverty; or how incomes should be distributed in a meritocratic capitalist society?
Illustrative research examples:
Our 2022 Nature Human Behaviour paper challenges a key assumption in how we study inequality. Instead of assuming that the well-known Gini index is the correct measure for all societies, we take a data-driven approach to identify which theoretical models may be most appropriate, and illustrate this approach for the US.
In ongoing work with a pioneering charity partner in the US, we study whether financial payments (also known as unconditional cash transfers) to low-income households can help them escape poverty. We are among the first studies to conduct large-scale field experiments in a high-income country by distributing over $7m in cash transfers. Our first results portray the nuanced challenges associated with poverty and cash transfers.
EDI and sustainability leadership
Leaders in organisations today faces many challenges: keeping profits and productivity high, whilst managing their businesses inclusively and sustainably. My work in this area works closely with senior leaders in global organisations to design more inclusive and sustainable workplaces. In some of this work—for instance, with Ericsson and the New South Wales government, through the BIG IDEAs Initiative—we use a data-driven approach to identify potential bias in hiring and promotion decisions, subsequently designing interventions to increase gender and ethnic equality. In other work—for example, with Qantas, as part of the STAR Lab—we study how organisations can become greener and involve their customers in making sustainable choices. How do we achieve equality and fairness at work? And how can organisations be both profitable and sustainable — that is, do well and do good?
Illustrative research examples:
In our working paper “Closing the gender gap in re-applications for senior roles”, we run a large-scale field experiment in a public organisation to close the gender gap for senior leadership applications — by focusing on (and encouraging) the most qualified candidates to apply for more roles in the future.
In ongoing work with a global technology company, we conduct a field experiment with the goal of making a diversity training actually work: while generic diversity and unconscious bias trainings have been found to be ineffective in changing workplace diversity, we find that a targeted, timely and short training video on diversity can lead more women and non-national applicants being hired.
