Without strong assumptions about how noise manifests in choices, we can infer little from existing empirical observations of the common ratio effect (CRE) about whether there exists an underlying common ratio preference (CRP). We propose to solve this inferential challenge using paired valuations, which yield valid inference under common assumptions. Using this approach in an online experiment with 900 participants, we find no evidence of a systematic CRP. To reconcile our findings with existing evidence, we present the same participants with paired choice tasks and demonstrate how noise can generate a CRE even for individuals without an associated CRP.

Many government program applications result in procedural denials due to administrative burdens associated with applying. We identify the intake interview as a key barrier to take-up of the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program and study the effect of an alternative application process designed to reduce burdens.  Using a field experiment involving 65,000 Los Angeles applicants, we find that access to flexible interviews initiated by the applicant increases approvals by six percentage points, doubles early approvals, and increases long-term participation by over two percentage points. Our findings highlight the importance of incorporating flexibility when designing program integrity policies to minimize procedural denials. 

We examine how people redistribute income when there is uncertainty about the role luck plays in determining opportunities and outcomes. We elicit redistribution decisions from a U.S.-representative sample who observe worker outcomes and whether luck magnified workers' effort (``lucky opportunities'') or determined workers’ income directly (``lucky outcomes''). We find that participants redistribute less and are less reactive to changes in the importance of luck in environments with lucky opportunities. Our findings have implications for models that seek to understand and predict redistribution attitudes and help to explain the gap between lab evidence on support for redistribution and U.S. inequality trends.

We test for a novel pattern of menu-dependent risk attitudes that forms the basis of some recent theories of risky choice: does expanding the range of potential prizes from lotteries in a choice set lead people to overweight those prizes and make riskier choices? Contrary to our hypothesis, we find no evidence of such a menu effect. Varying the potential prize offered by an actuarially unfavorable, high-risk lottery does not affect the likelihood of choosing a different, moderate-risk gamble in favor of a safer alternative. Our well-powered null results cast doubt on prominent theories of menu-dependent risk preferences, but are potentially consistent with either probability weighting or expected utility with heterogeneous risk preferences.

We study the behavior of U.S. consumers' inflation expectations during the high inflation period of 2021-22 using data from the Survey of Consumers Expectations. Short- and, to a lesser extent, medium-term inflation expectations rose as inflation surged in 2021. Disagreement and uncertainty about future inflation increased significantly. Then, in 2022, even as inflation continued to climb, medium- and longer-term inflation expectations unexpectedly fell and medium- and longer-term deflation expectations increased. We find that respondents with deflation expectations tend to expect prices to mean revert and are more optimistic about the economic outlook.