Marta Serra-Garcia

Serra-Garcia conducts research in behavioral and experimental economics. Her research focuses on how individuals acquire and transmit information and how this in turn affects their preferences and behavior. Among others, her research studies how the desire to preserve a positive self-image shapes individuals’ ethical decision-making, such as lying and charitable giving. Serra-Garcia has been published in numerous journals including Management Science, Psychological Science, the Journal of the European Economic Association, and Games and Economic Behavior. She has also been recognized as the 2020 Best 40 under 40 MBA Professors. 

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.

  Selected Publications

• Andreoni and Serra-Garcia (2019). "The Pledging Puzzle: How Can Revocable Promises Increase Charitable Giving?", accepted, Management Science.
• Serra-Garcia, Gneezy and Hansen (2020) "Can Short Psychological Interventions Affect Academic Performance? Revisiting the Effect of Self-Affirmation Interventions", accepted, Psychological Science. 
• Gneezy, Saccardo, Serra-Garcia and van Veldhuizen (2020). “Bribing the Self”, forthcoming, Games and Economic Behavior.
• Luhrmann, Serra-Garcia and Winter (2018). "The Impact of Financial Education on Adolescents' Intertemporal Choices", American Economic Journal: Economic Policy.
• Brown and Serra-Garcia (2017). "The Threat of Exclusion and Implicit Contracting", Management Science, 63 (12), 4081-4100.
• Lahno and Serra-Garcia (2015). "Peer Effects in Risk Taking: Envy or Conformity?", Journal of Risk and Uncertainty, 50, 75-93. 
• Gneezy, Rockenbach and Serra-Garcia (2013). "Measuring lying aversion", Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization,93, 293-300.
• Serra-Garcia, van Damme and Potters (2013). "Lying about what you know or about what you do?", Journal of the European Economic Association,11(5),1204-1229. 
• Serra-Garcia, van Damme and Potters (2011). "Hiding an Inconvenient Truth: Lies and Vagueness", Games and Economic Behavior 73, 244-261

 Working Papers

• Serra-Garcia and Gneezy (2019). "Mistakes and Overconfidence in Detecting Lies," R&R, American Economic Review.
• Serra-Garcia (2020). "Risk Attitudes and Conflict in the Household". R&R, Economic Journal.
• Andreoni and Serra-Garcia (2016). "Time-Inconsistent Charitable Giving", NBER Working Paper No. 22824. R&R, Journal of Public Economics. 
• Serra-Garcia and Szech (2019). "The (In)Elasticity of Moral Ignorance" resubmission invited, Management Science. 

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.