ALBERTO PRATI

I am an Assistant Professor in Economics at UCL, where I teach economic psychology and how to use subjective data to answer public policy questions. I also serve as a Research Fellow at the University of Oxford and as an Associate Researcher at the London School of Economics.

I am a behavioural economist, working on:

Measurement: improving the quality of subjective numerical data, from Likert scales in large-scale surveys to grades in education.
Beyond GDP: understanding wellbeing and its determinants, as well as non-monetary inequality and unsustainable behaviours.
Experiments: studying why people form different opinions and how memories and emotions shape them.

You can contact me at:
a[dot]prati[at]ucl[dot]ac[dot]uk
prati[dot]alberto[dot]eu[at]gmail[dot]com

You can hear about my research at:

King's College London (28th May, London)

Research Overview

Measurement

Hedonic Recall Bias

You should not ask people how much they earn. If people are happy with their wage, they will overstate it, if they are not, they will understate it.

Rescaling

Feelings do not have a natural unit – like kilograms or meters – and are measured on mental scales that can move over time. In this study, we show how to correct for this. After correction, several empirical paradoxes disappear.

Measuring changes

With Likert scales, sometimes measuring “changes” is better than measuring “levels”. In this paper we show why this happens, and how surveys can be adapted.

Beyond GDP

Inflation inequalities

Does money buy happiness? Well, it depends on how much it costs (and not everyone pays the same price). The study shows that inflation inequalities represent a substantial (and, often, overlooked) burden for consumer’s well-being.

Sharing meals

Using data from 142 countries, we should that sharing meals with others is associated with greater wellbeing. But with every passing year, Americans are dining alone more and more often.

4800 tons of CO2

With Olivier Chanel and Morgan Raux, we provide an estimate of the environmental impact of the recruitment system in the economics profession, known as the "international job market for economists".

Experiments

Motivated memory

Do people forget failures in order to feel better or because they feel good? We test these two hypotheses in a lab experiment.

Motivated beliefs

What happens to your memories and beliefs once you receive a vaccine? We show that, during the COVID-19 pandemic, people assigned to either the Moderna or Pfizer vaccine came to see "their" vaccine as the safest and most effective, and misremembered it as their preferred option all along.

Time preferences

Duty comes before pleasure, but a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush. We set a laboratory experiment to understand if people are ready to sacrifice for their future when it comes to work rather than money.

Research Keywords:

life satisfaction, subjective well-being, memory, motivated beliefs, motivated reasoning, feeling, emotion, evaluative judgment, bias, carbon footprint, time preferences, measurement, methodology, experiment, survey.