Marta Serra-Garcia

Serra-Garcia conducts research in behavioral and experimental economics. Her research focuses on the importance of morals and social norms in economic decision-making. She studies (1) how individuals preserve their identity as moral and generous when there is an incentive to behave unethically or selfishly, (2) how the desire to conform to others affects risk taking, and (3) the impact of incentives to defect on the formation of long-term trust relationships. She also studies the determinants of mistakes in economic decision-making, focusing on the role of complexity and financial education. Serra-Garcia has been published in numerous journals including the Journal of the European Economic Association, Management Science and Games and Economic Behavior.

Prior to coming to the Rady School, Serra-Garcia was an assistant professor at the University of Munich. Serra-Garcia earned her Ph.D. and M.Sc. in Economics at Tilburg University. She earned a B.A. in Business Administration from the Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Barcelona.

Publications

• "The Impact of Financial Education on Adolescents' Intertemporal Choices", with Melanie Lührmann and Joachim Winter, 2018, AEJ: Economic Policy.
• "The Threat of Exclusion and Implicit Contracting", with Martin Brown, Management Science (2017), 63 (12), 4081-4100.
• "Peer Effects in Risk Taking: Envy or Conformity?", with Amrei Lahno, Journal of Risk and Uncertainty (2015), 50, 75-93. 
• "Measuring lying aversion", with Uri Gneezy and Bettina Rockenbach, Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization (2013),93, 293-300.
• "Lying about what you know or about what you do?", with Eric van Damme and Jan Potters, Journal of the European Economic Association (2013),11(5),1204-1229. 
• "Hiding an Inconvenient Truth: Lies and Vagueness", with Eric van Damme and Jan Potters, Games and Economic Behavior73 (2011), 244-261

Working Papers

• "Risk Attitudes and Conflict in the Household". Resubmission invited, Economic Journal.
• "Bribing the Self", with Uri Gneezy, Silvia Saccardo and Roel van Veldhuizen. R&R, Games and Economic Behavior.
• "Can Short Psychological Interventions Affect Academic Performance? Revisiting the Effect of Self-Affirmation Interventions", with Uri Gneezy and Karsten Hansen. R&R, Psychological Science. 
• "Time-Inconsistent Charitable Giving", with Jim Andreoni (2016), NBER Working Paper No. 22824. (New version), under review. 
• "The Pledging Puzzle: How Can Revocable Promises Increase Charitable Giving?", with Jim Andreoni (2019), under review. 
• "The (In)Elasticity of Moral Ignorance" with Nora Szech, under review.
• "Mistakes and Overconfidence in Detecting Lies," with Uri Gneezy, under review.

Book Chapters

• "Lying in Economics" (2018), The Oxford Handbook of Lying. Oxford University Press.
•  "Who Gives? The Roles of Empathy and Impulsivity", with Jim Andreoni and Ann-Kathrin Koessler (2018), The Economics of Philanthropy: Donations and Fundraising. MIT Press.