SITE Seminar | Strategic ignorance and perceived control

Welcome to the next SITE Seminar! On October 8, Tillmann Eymess, PostDoc at Institute for International Economic Studies, will present his working paper entitled "Strategic Ignorance and Perceived Control" at SSE and online via Zoom.

Start time: 2024-10-08 at 12:00

End time: 2024-10-08 at 13:00

Time zone: CEST

Location: Room Ragnar at SSE and online via Zoom

Working paper title: 'Strategic ignorance and perceived control'

By: Tillmann Eymess

Abstract

When useful information provokes negative emotion, it may deliberately be ignored. We experimentally investigate whether increasing perceived control can mitigate such strategic ignorance. Participants from India were presented with a choice to receive information about the average loss of life expectancy due to air pollution in their home district and were later asked to recall it. We find that an increase in perceived control substantially improves information recall, an effect driven by individuals with optimistic prior beliefs. We conduct the same experiment in the US and confirm this latter result. A theoretical framework rationalizes our findings.

About the speaker

Tillmann Eymess is a Postdoc at the IIES, Stockholm University.

Before joining the Institute for International Economic Studies (IIES), he worked as a Postdoc at the Research Center for Environmental Economics at Heidelberg University, Germany where he obtained his PhD in 2021. His research interests are at the intersection of environmental and development economics. As an applied microeconomist, he use behavioral methods through field interventions, lab-in-the-field experiments, as well as online surveys and survey experiments with populations from around the world.

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Interested in attending the SITE Seminar at SSE or online via Zoom?

The link to the seminar will be distributed by invitation only. If you are interested in attending the seminar – please contact site@hhs.se. Follow the instructions below: