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Assistant Professor Daniel Dench
dench@gatech.edu
Summary Sentence: School of Economics Seminar Series presents: Paul Ferraro from John Hopkins University
Full Summary: No summary paragraph submitted.
Seminar Speaker Series: Paul FerraroPlease join us Friday, April 8, at 2 pm for the next event in our Spring 2022 Seminar Speaker Series!
Paul Ferraro, Bloomberg Distinguished Professor of Human Behavior and Public Policy at Johns Hopkins University, will present: "Exposure-Enhanced Goods and Technology Disadoption."
This event will be hybrid online and in person. Join us in person at the Old CE B uilding room G-10. To join virtually, please use the Zoom link below with passcode 881372.
https://gatech.zoom.us/j/96012573116?pwd=MjQwNDNZT3ZIVTExVkg4UWNEaEgxQT09
Policymakers often subsidize goods that generate positive externalities, only to see these goods disadopted. We posit that disadoption can be mitigated by incentiviz[1]ing longer exposure, which reduces disadoption via three mechanisms: information, taste, and ability. We develop a theoretical model that incorporates these mechanisms and demonstrate how it relates to the literatures on experience goods, habit forma[1]tion, and learning-by-doing. We provide empirical evidence for the model’s predictions using a field experiment in which a household’s period of exposure to water-efficient technologies was exogenously manipulated via a financial incentive. Using our theoret[1]ical model, we then develop intuition about the optimal time distribution of subsidies. We show that, under common features of policy contexts, limited-duration exposure subsidies can be better than subsidies offered at the point of purchase or in perpetuity conditional on use. Our paper thus highlights conditions under which policymakers can use short-term incentives to induce long-term behavioral change.
