David Albrecht (he/him)

Research Papers

Mitigating manipulation in committees: Just let them talk!
[Working Paper] [Preregistration]
Keywords: Group Decision Making, Committees, Manipulation, Face-to-face Communication, Delphi Technique

Many decisions rest on the collective judgment of small groups like committees or teams. However, some group members may have hidden agendas and manipulate this judgment to influence decisions in their favor. Utilizing an incentivized experiment, I compare how objective accuracy and perceived trustworthiness of judgments from groups using two out-of-the-shelf interaction formats - the Delphi technique and face-to-face meetings - are affected by manipulation.
Without manipulation, Delphi is more accurate. With manipulation, face-to-face is more accurate. Only in situations with manipulation the more accurate interaction format is perceived as more trustworthy. With manipulation, sharing of (truthful) information decreases in Delphi but not in face-to-face interaction.

Debt Aversion: Theory and Measurement
(with Thomas Meissner) [Working Paper]
Keywords: Debt Aversion, Intertemporal Choice, Risk and Time Preferences

Debt aversion can adversely impact financial decision-making. We propose a model of debt aversion and conduct an experiment involving real debt and saving contracts to jointly elicit debt aversion with preferences over time, risk, and intertemporal losses. We find that 89% of participants are debt averse, which strongly influences their choices. We estimate the “borrowing premium” – the compensation an average person would require to accept getting into debt – to be around 16% of the principal. Building on these findings, we validate a survey module to measure debt aversion in real-world contexts where complex laboratory experiments are infeasible. Applying the survey module to a large, representative sample of German households, we find that debt aversion is both statistically and economically significantly associated with actual debt-taking and financial health.

The debt aversion survey module: An experimentally validated tool to measure individual debt aversion
(with Thomas Meissner) [Working Paper]
Keywords: Debt Aversion, Preference Measurement, Survey Validation

We develop an experimentally validated, short and easy-to-use survey module for measuring individual debt aversion. To this end, we first estimate debt aversion on an individual level, using choice data fromMeissner and Albrecht (2022). This data also contains responses to a large set of debt aversion survey items, consisting of existing items from the literature and novel items developed for this study. Out of these, we identify a survey module comprising two qualitative survey items to best predict debt aversion in the incentivized experiment.

Ongoing Research

#ManyDaughters: Multi-Analyst Project Exploring the Effect of Daughters on Preferences and Behaviors
(with Aurélien Baillon, Anna Dreber, Frank M. Fossen, Felix Holzmeister, Taisuke Imai, Magnus Johannesson, Levent Neyse, Séverine Toussaert, Yifan Yang)

We collect pre-analysis plans and analysis code from 100+ research teams testing hypotheses about the impact of having daughters on attitudes, preferences, and behaviors using data from the German Socioeconomic Panel. The main aim of this study is twofold. First, by varying whether research teams have access to a 5% sample of the data before writing their pre-analysis plan, we explore whether initial access to sample data improves the quality of the pre-analysis plan and analysis compared to writing a pre-analysis plan without access to any data. Second, the study aims to further our understanding of the impact of having daughters on behaviors and preferences by conducting a meta-analysis of the test results suggested by participating research teams.

Expanding Moral Wiggle Room: A Large-Scale Online Replication and the Role of Moral Context
(with Hande Erkut, Jakob Möller, Magnus Johannesson, and Levent Neyse)

Generosity in economic games is typically attributed to social preferences such as altruism, fairness, inequality aversion, and reciprocity. However, the seminal moral wiggle room paper argues that much of what appears to be generosity is driven less by genuine social preferences than by concerns about self-image and social image. In this large-scale (n=12,000 participants) study, we first replicate the moral wiggle room experiment online with a sample almost thirty times larger than the original. Importantly, we then investigate whether the effect diminishes when the moral context is strengthened by using vulnerable groups as recipients. Finally, we test robustness by varying only the self-image motive, both for standard recipients and for vulnerable ones. Overall, our study provides highly powered conceptual replications that shed light on the robustness of the original moral wiggle room effect under different conditions of moral responsibility and motivational drivers.

#ManyLabs - DACH: A Multi-Lab Study across Germany, Austria, and Switzerland
(with Cankut Kuzlukluoğlu, Anna Dreber, Felix Holzmeister, Magnus Johannesson, Levent Neyse)

This multi-lab study will unite economics labs across Germany, Austria, and Switzerlands. We aim to (i) test a mechanism for selecting experimental designs that can be included in many-labs studies. (ii) To conduct high-powered meta-analytic tests of the hypotheses (treatment effects) evaluated in the selected experimental design. (iii) To estimate the population heterogeneity in these treatment effects across the participating laboratories (Holzmeister et al., 2024). (iv) To examine whether treatment effects estimated in the many-lab data collection differ from treatment effects estimated in an online data collection. (v) To compare the student population in the DACH region (Germany, Austria, and Switzerland) with a representative sample of the German population, in collaboration with SOEP, one of the largest and most established household panel studies in the world.

#ManyLabs - GLOBAL
(with Aurélien Baillon, Anna Dreber, Felix Holzmeister, Taisuke Imai, Magnus Johannesson, Levent Neyse and Severine Toussaert)

We run seminal economic experiments in 50+ labs around the world to assess population heterogeneity, provide high-powered tests of key methodological issues and conduct replications for key findings from prominent papers.

Contribution to Crowdscience Projects

Examining the generalizability of research findings from archival data
(Andrew Delios, Elena Giulia Clemente, Tao Wu, Hongbin Tan, Yong Wang, Michael Gordon, Domenico Viganola, Zhaowei Chen, Anna Dreber, Magnus Johannesson, Thomas Pfeiffer, Eric Luis Uhlmann)
[Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 2022]
Keywords: Generalizability, Archival Data, Reproducibility, Strategic Management, Forecasting

Abstract

This initiative examined systematically the extent to which a large set of archival research findings generalizes across contexts. We repeated the key analyses for 29 original strategic management effects in the same context (direct reproduction) as well as in 52 novel time periods and geographies; 45% of the reproductions returned results matching the original reports together with 55% of tests in different spans of years and 40% of tests in novel geographies. Some original findings were associated with multiple new tests. Reproducibility was the best predictor of generalizability—for the findings that proved directly reproducible, 84% emerged in other available time periods and 57% emerged in other geographies. Overall, only limited empirical evidence emerged for context sensitivity. In a forecasting survey, independent scientists were able to anticipate which effects would find support in tests in new samples.