About

Erik Eyster is the Department Chair and a Professor of Economics at UC Santa Barbara. His research focuses on Microeconomic Theory, Behavioral Economics, and Experimental Economics. As a key member of the Theory and Experiment Consortium, he contributes to advancing understanding in these areas, emphasizing the intersection of economic behavior and experimental methods.

Research topics

• Computer Science
• Medicine
• Psychology
• Mathematics
• Economics

Selected publications

• Improving children's food choices: Experimental evidence from the field

  European Economic Review · 2023 · 4 citations

  • Computer Science
  • Psychology
  • Economics

  We present a field experiment to study the effects of different information conditions on food choices of 282 children in elementary schools. Previous interventions have typically paid participants for healthy eating, but this often may not be feasible. We introduce a system where food items are graded based on their nutritional value, involving parents or classmates as change agents by providing them with information regarding food choices. We find parents’ involvement in the decision process to be particularly beneficial in boosting healthy food choices, with very strong results that persist months after the intervention.

  PublisherDOI

• Improving Healthy Eating in Children: Experimental Evidence

  SSRN Electronic Journal · 2021-01-01 · 2 citations

  articleOpen access
  PublisherDOI

• Improving Healthy Eating in Children: Experimental Evidence

  SSRN Electronic Journal · 2021-01-01 · 2 citations

  articleOpen access
  PublisherDOI

• A Theory of Ex Post Rationalization

  arXiv (Cornell University) · 2021-07-15

  preprintOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  People rationalize their past choices, even those that were mistakes in hindsight. We propose a formal theory of this behavior. The theory predicts that sunk costs affect later choices. Its model primitives are identified by choice behavior and it yields tractable comparative statics.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Improving Healthy Eating in Children: Experimental Evidence

  RePEc: Research Papers in Economics · 2020-01-01

  preprintOpen access

  We present a field experiment to study the effects of non-monetary incentives on healthy food choices of 282 children in elementary schools. Previous interventions have typically paid participants for healthy eating, but this often may not be feasible. We introduce a system where food items are graded based on their nutritional value, involving parents or classmates as change agents by providing them with information regarding the food choices of their children or friends. We find parents' involvement in the decision process to be particularly beneficial in boosting healthy food choices, with very strong results that persist months after the intervention.

  OA PDF

• Errors in strategic reasoning

  Handbook of behavioral economics · 2018-12-27 · 31 citations

  book-chapter1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• Pricing under Fairness Concerns

  London School of Economics and Political Science Research Online (London School of Economics and Political Science) · 2018-12-04

  preprintOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  This paper proposes a theory of pricing consistent with two well-documented patterns: customers care about fairness, and firms take these concerns into account when they set prices. The theory assumes that customers find a price unfair when it carries a high markup over cost, and that customers dislike unfair prices. Since markups are not observable, customers must extract them from prices. The theory assumes that customers infer less than rationally: when a price rises after an increase in marginal cost, customers partially misattribute the higher price to a higher markup—which they find unfair. Firms anticipate this response and trim their price increases, which reduces the passthrough of marginal costs into prices below one: prices are somewhat rigid. Embedded in a New Keynesian model—as a replacement of Calvo pricing—our theory produces monetary nonneutrality. When monetary policy loosens and inflation rises, customers misperceive markups as higher and feel unfairly treated; firms mitigate the perceived unfairness of prices by reducing their markups, which in general equilibrium leads to higher output.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• An Experiment On Social Mislearning

  SSRN Electronic Journal · 2018-01-01 · 20 citations

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  We investigate experimentally whether social learners appreciate the redundancy of information conveyed by their observed predecessors' actions. Each participant observes a private signal and enters an estimate of the sum of all earlier-moving participants' signals plus her own. In a first treatment, participants move single-file and observe all predecessors' entries; Bayesian Nash Equilibrium (BNE) predicts that each participant simply add her signal to her immediate predecessor's entry. Although 75% of participants do so, redundancy neglect by the other 25% generates excess imitation and mild inefficiencies. In a second treatment, participants move four per period; BNE predicts that most players anti-imitate some observed entries. Such anti-imitation occurs in 35% of the most transparent cases, and 16% overall. The remaining redundancy neglect creates dramatic excess imitation and inefficiencies: late-period entries are far too extreme, and on average participants would earn substantially more by ignoring their predecessors altogether.

  PublisherDOI

• The GP20 Plan of Action: a rallying call to stakeholders

  DOAJ (DOAJ: Directory of Open Access Journals) · 2018-01-01

  articleOpen access

  A new Plan of Action seeks to build momentum and encourage more strategic action on advancing policy and practice in the area of internal displacement.

  Publisher

• Financial Markets Where Traders Neglect the Informational Content of Prices

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

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  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' information from prices, even when they dismiss it as noisier than their own. Making private information public raises rational and “dismissive” volume, but reduces cursed volume given moderate noninformational trading motives.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

Frequent coauthors

• Matthew Rabin

  Harvard University

  43 shared

• Ernesto Dal Bó

  32 shared

• Pedro Dal Bó

  John Brown University

  29 shared

• Navin Kartik

  26 shared

• Andrea Galeotti

  26 shared

• Kristóf Madarász

  Laser Scan Engineering (United Kingdom)

  10 shared

• Pascal Michaillat

  University of California, Santa Cruz

  10 shared

• Georg Weizsäcker

  German Institute for Economic Research

  6 shared