Judd B. Kessler

Judd B. Kessler
  • Howard Marks Professor

Contact Information

  • office Address:

    320 Dinan Hall (formerly Vance Hall)
    3733 Spruce Street
    Philadelphia, PA 19104

Research Interests: Experimental Economics, Public Economics, Behavioral Economics, Market Design

Links: Personal Website, CV

Overview

Professor Judd B. Kessler received a B.A. in Economics from Harvard University in 2004, an M.Phil. in Economics from Cambridge University in 2005, and his Ph.D. in Business Economics from Harvard University in 2011. In his research, Kessler uses a combination of laboratory and field experiments to answer questions in Public Economics, Behavioral Economics, and Market Design. He investigates the economic and psychological forces that motivate individuals to contribute to public goods, with applications including organ donation, worker effort, and charitable giving. He also investigates market design innovations, placing particular emphasis on bringing market design from theory to practice, with applications including course allocation and priority systems for organ allocation. His research has appeared in general interest journals including the American Economic Review, the Quarterly Journal of Economics, the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, and Management Science. In 2021, Kessler was awarded the Vernon L. Smith Ascending Scholar Prize.

 

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Research

For a current list of my publications and working papers, please visit my personal website.

 

  • Erika Kirgios, Edward Chang, Emma E. Levine, Katherine L. Milkman, Judd B. Kessler (2020), Forgoing Earned Incentives to Signal Pure Motives, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 117 (29), pp. 16891-16897.

    Abstract: Financial incentives can spark behavior change but often damage recipients’ self-image. We designed and tested an intervention that allows organizations and individuals to resolve this tension. We motivated actors with financial rewards and then gave them the opportunity to forgo those rewards to signal their past actions were intrinsically motivated. We propose that actors who forgo financial rewards engage in “motivation laundering,” passing up payments earned for an incentivized action to retroactively signal that their motivations were intrinsic. Our intervention has the potential to leave organizations and incentivized individuals better off: Financial rewards help actors build better habits, and motivation laundering allows them to boost their self-image, while giving organizations opportunities to lower incentive program costs.

  • Corinne Low, Judd B. Kessler, Colin Sullivan (2019), Incentivized Resume Rating: Eliciting Employer Preferences without Deception, American Economic Review, 109 (11).

    Abstract: We introduce a new experimental paradigm to evaluate employer preferences, called Incentivized Resume Rating (IRR). Employers evaluate resumes they know to be hypothetical in order to be matched with real job seekers, preserving incentives while avoiding the deception necessary in audit studies. We deploy IRR with employers recruiting college seniors from a prestigious school, randomizing human capital characteristics and demographics of hypothetical candidates. We measure both employer preferences for candidates and employer beliefs about the likelihood candidates will accept job offers, avoiding a typical confound in audit studies. We discuss the costs, benefits, and future applications of this new methodology.

  • Judd B. Kessler, Katherine L. Milkman, C. Yiwei Zhang (2019), Getting the Rich and Powerful to Give, Management Science, 65 (9), pp. 4049-4062.

    Abstract: What motivates the rich and powerful to exhibit generosity? We explore this important question in a large field experiment. We solicit donations from 32,174 alumni of an Ivy League university, including thousands of rich and powerful alumni. Consistent with past psychology research, we find that the rich and powerful respond dramatically, and differently than others, to being given a sense of agency over the use of donated funds.Gifts from rich and powerful alumni increase by 100%–350% when they are given a sense of agency. This response arises primarily on the intensive margin with no effect on the likelihood of donating. Results suggest that motivating the rich and powerful to act may require tailored interventions.

  • Jennie Huang, Judd B. Kessler, Muriel Niederle (Draft), The Value of Information and the Role of Fairness in Bargaining.

    Abstract: Research from the last three decades suggests that fairness plays an important role in economic transactions. However, the vast majority of this evidence investigates behavior in a full-information environment. We develop a new experimental paradigm—which nests the widely used Ultimatum Game—to show that the role of fairness in economic transactions depends fundamentally on the information structure. We find that when transacting agents are less informed, inequality increases. In the absence of information, proposers give less-fair offers and report believing that responders will accept them. Responders do, in fact, accept less-fair offers when proposers are informed, suggesting that responders are concerned about their social image or proposers’ intentions.

  • Amanda Chuan, Judd B. Kessler, Katherine L. Milkman (2018), A Field Study of Charitable Giving Reveals that Reciprocity Decays over Time, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 155 (8), pp. 1766-1771.

    Abstract: We examine how reciprocity changes over time by studying a large quasi-experiment in the field. Specifically, we analyze administrative data from a university hospital system. The data include information about over 18,000 donation requests made by the hospital system via mail to a set of its former patients in the four months following their first hospital visit. We exploit quasi-experimental variation in the timing of solicitation mailings relative to patient hospital visits and find that an extra 30-day delay between the provision of medical care and a donation solicitation decreases the likelihood of a donation by 30%. Our findings have important implications for models of economic behavior, which currently fail to incorporate reciprocity’s sensitivity to time. The fact that reciprocal behavior decays rapidly as time passes also suggests the importance of capitalizing quickly on opportunities to benefit from a quid pro quo.

    Description: Datasets in "A Field Study of Charitable Giving Reveals that Reciprocity Decays over Time"   Dataset regression_deid is the deidentified dataset used to create main and supplemental regression tables (Fig. 1, Tables 3,  S1-S3, S5-S7, and S10). Dataset regression_deidexp is the deidentified dataset used to create regression tables exploring the role of patient experience (tables S8 and S9). Dataset sumstat_deid is the deidentified dataset used to create summary statistics tables (Tables 1, 2, S2, and S4).

  • Ezekiel J. Emanuel, P. Ubel, Judd B. Kessler, G. Meyer, R. Muller, Amol Navathe, P. Patel, R. Pearl, MB Rosenthal, L. Sacks, AP Sen, P. Sherman, Kevin Volpp (2015), Using Behavioral Economics to Design Physician Incentives that Deliver High Value Care, Annals of Internal Medicine, 24 (), pp. 1-7.

  • Judd B. Kessler and Alvin Roth (2014), Getting More Organs for Transplantation, American Economic Review, Papers and Proceedings.

  • Judd B. Kessler and Stephan Meier (2014), Learning from (Failed) Replications: Cognitive Load Manipulations and Charitable Giving, Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization.

  • Judd B. Kessler and C. Yiwei Zhang (2014), Behavioral Economics and Health, Oxford Textbook of Public Health.

  • Judd B. Kessler and Alvin Roth (2014), Organ Donation Loopholes Undermine Giving: An Experiment Motivated By Priority Loopholes in Israel, Journal of Public Economics.

Teaching

Spring 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022 – BEPP 220/620: “Behavioral Economics, Markets and Public Policy” (Undergraduate and MBA)

Spring 2019, Fall 2021 – BEPP 904 “Experimental Economics” (PhD)

Fall 2012, 2013, 2015, 2017 – MGEC 611/612: “Managerial Economics” (MBA)

Spring 2012 – BPUB 250: “Managerial Economics” (Undergraduate)

 

Current Courses (Fall 2024)

  • BEPP0001 - Intro Behavioral Economics

    Governments and firms set policy in a world of behavioral agents. This course will present economic approaches to these policy problems when individuals act in behavioral ways. Readings will be newspaper articles that will be discussed in class. Assignments -- two problem sets and an exam -- will include qualitative and quantitative analysis.

    BEPP0001001 ( Syllabus )

  • BEPP9040 - Experimental Economics

    This course will help prepare you to run your own economics laboratory and field experiments. Experimental methods have been widely adopted by economists to develop new insights, and some economic theories and hypotheses are uniquely well-suited for testing with experimental tools and data. Achieving high internal and external validity requires careful experimental design. Substantive areas of application in the course will include market equilibrium, asset bubbles, learning in games, public good provision, and labor market relationships. Additional topics may include biases in individual decision-making; field experiments in development economics; and happiness, neuroeconomics, and behavioral/experimental welfare economics. Economists' typical interests in strategic and market-based interactions raise particular methodological challenges and opportunities.

    BEPP9040401 ( Syllabus )

  • OIDD9040 - Experimental Economics

    This course will help prepare you to run your own economics laboratory and field experiments. Experimental methods have been widely adopted by economists to develop new insights, and some economic theories and hypotheses are uniquely well-suited for testing with experimental tools and data. Achieving high internal and external validity requires careful experimental design. Substantive areas of application in the course will include market equilibrium, asset bubbles, learning in games, public good provision, and labor market relationships. Additional topics may include biases in individual decision-making; field experiments in development economics; and happiness, neuroeconomics, and behavioral/experimental welfare economics. Economists' typical interests in strategic and market-based interactions raise particular methodological challenges and opportunities.

    OIDD9040401 ( Syllabus )

All Courses

  • BEPP0001 - Intro Behavioral Economics

    Governments and firms set policy in a world of behavioral agents. This course will present economic approaches to these policy problems when individuals act in behavioral ways. Readings will be newspaper articles that will be discussed in class. Assignments -- two problem sets and an exam -- will include qualitative and quantitative analysis.

  • BEPP2200 - Behavioral Economics

    Behavioral economics has revealed a variety of systematic ways in which people deviate from being perfectly selfish, rational, optimizing agents. These findings have important implications for government policy and firm behavior. This course will explore these implications by answering two main questions: (1) what does behavorial economics imply for when and how the government should intervene in markets? (2) What does behavioral economics imply for firms' pricing and production decisions? The course will present the standard economic approaches to answering these questions and then explore how answers change when we consider that people act in behavioral ways. Towards the end of the course, we will investigate specific policy questions, allowing us to debate solutions while hearing from policy makers operating in a world of behavioral agents.

  • BEPP2990 - Independent Study

  • BEPP6200 - Behavioral Econ, Markets

    Behavioral economics has revealed a variety of systematic ways in which people deviate from being perfectly selfish, rational, optimizing agents. These findings have important implications for government policy and firm behavior. This course will explore these implications by answering two main questions: (1) what does behavioral economics imply for when and how the government should intervene in markets? (2) What does behavioral economics imply for firms' pricing and production decisions? The course will present the standard economic approaches to answering these questions and then explore how answers change when we consider that people act in behavioral ways. Towards the end of the course, we will investigate specific policy questions, allowing us to debate solutions while hearing from policy makers operating in a world of behavioral agents.

  • BEPP9040 - Experimental Economics

    This course will help prepare you to run your own economics laboratory and field experiments. Experimental methods have been widely adopted by economists to develop new insights, and some economic theories and hypotheses are uniquely well-suited for testing with experimental tools and data. Achieving high internal and external validity requires careful experimental design. Substantive areas of application in the course will include market equilibrium, asset bubbles, learning in games, public good provision, and labor market relationships. Additional topics may include biases in individual decision-making; field experiments in development economics; and happiness, neuroeconomics, and behavioral/experimental welfare economics. Economists' typical interests in strategic and market-based interactions raise particular methodological challenges and opportunities.

  • OIDD9040 - Experimental Economics

    This course will help prepare you to run your own economics laboratory and field experiments. Experimental methods have been widely adopted by economists to develop new insights, and some economic theories and hypotheses are uniquely well-suited for testing with experimental tools and data. Achieving high internal and external validity requires careful experimental design. Substantive areas of application in the course will include market equilibrium, asset bubbles, learning in games, public good provision, and labor market relationships. Additional topics may include biases in individual decision-making; field experiments in development economics; and happiness, neuroeconomics, and behavioral/experimental welfare economics. Economists' typical interests in strategic and market-based interactions raise particular methodological challenges and opportunities.

Awards and Honors

  • Vernon L. Smith Ascending Scholar Prize, 2021
  • Named “30 under 30” in Law and Policy by Forbes Magazine, 2012
  • Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and the Donaghue Foundation Pioneer Portfolio Grant Recipient, 2012 Description

    Project Title: “Using Behavioral Economics to Promote Medication Adherence and Habit Formation” (with Dmitry Taubinsky and Eric Zwick)

    Total Received for Project: $150,400

    • Robert Wood Johnson Foundation’s Pioneer Portfolio and the Donaghue Foundation ($100,000)
    • Sub-Award from Laibson/Madrian Grant ($30,000)
    • Lab for Economic Applications and Policy at Harvard ($12,000)
    • Penn-CMU Roybal Grant ($8,400)
  • Roger Martin Award for Excellence in Business Economics, Harvard Business School, 2011
  • National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship, 2005-2008

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Latest Research

Erika Kirgios, Edward Chang, Emma E. Levine, Katherine L. Milkman, Judd B. Kessler (2020), Forgoing Earned Incentives to Signal Pure Motives, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 117 (29), pp. 16891-16897.
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In the News

Back to School: Transitioning from Summer Jobs | Judd Kessler

Professor Judd Kessler explains how summer jobs can impact teenagers in the short- and long-term.…Read More

Knowledge at Wharton - 8/27/2024
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A blue tinted image of a paper with a pen. The paper reads: Employee Performance EvaluationThe Confidence Gap in Work Performance Reviews Between Women and Men

If you’ve ever had to rate your own performance at work, you know it can be a tough task to navigate. Rate yourself too high and it may seem like bragging; too low and it could signal a lack of confidence in your work. Of course, the way you view…

Wharton Stories - 01/03/2020
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