ALBERTO PRATI

After my PhD in Economics, I joined the University of Oxford as a postdoctoral research fellow of the Wellbeing Research Centre. I also serve as an associate researcher at the Centre for Economic Performance (London School of Economics) and at the French Wellbeing Observatory (CEPREMAP).

My research lies at the intersection of behavioral economics, social psychology and philosophy of science.

I am interested in how human beings navigate the complexities of time and knowledge. This motivates my studies on memory (what are the implications of forgetting and misrecalling for judgments and decisions), subjective wellbeing (how people evaluate their feelings and how these evaluations can help guide public policies), inter-temporal choice (when and how people sacrifice for the future) and motivated cognition (how people decide what they want to know). I also work on the promotion of sustainable behaviors and institutions.

I have been collecting and analyzing different types of data: from experiments, large surveys, administrative registers and websites.

You can contact me at: alberto[dot]prati[at]sciencespo[dot]fr

You can meet me at:

Brain Affective Lab seminar (University College of London), 18th November 2021.

Research Overview:

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.

Time preferences

Duty comes before pleasure, but a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush... With Maria Bigoni, Davide Dragone and Stéphane Luchini, we set an experiment to understand if people are ready to sacrifice for their future.

Inflation and Well-Being

Does money buy happiness? Well, it depends on how much it costs. Heterogeneous inflation rates can explain part of well-being inequalities.

Past Well-Being

"Are you happier than last year?" With Claudia Senik, we collected over 250,000 interviews that have asked this and similar questions since the 70s around the world. By comparing actual and recalled life narratives, we uncover opposite biases in recalled life satisfaction.

Memory and Emotions

Do people forget failures in order to be happier or because they are happy? With Charlotte Saucet, we test the two hypotheses in a lab experiment.

4,000 CO2 tons

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". It is time to rediscuss this ecologically unsustainable process.

Green Well-Being

A green and happy society: two pigeons with one stone? With Chris Krekel, we review and extend the evidence on the link between pro-environmental behaviors and subjective well-being.

Hedonic Telescoping

When was your last wage rise? And your last wage cut? The way you match an event with its date may depend on your current satisfaction.

Self-Serving Bias

"Self-serving bias” refers to situations where people distort information in a way which is favorable for themselves. But how can we test it in the lab? I present some criticisms and a solution.

COVID-19 Vaccines

Most people try to form an accurate opinion about COVID-19 vaccines. But what happens to your memories and beliefs once you received your jab? To know the answer, Charlotte Saucet and I interviewed over 1,000 UK residents before and after they received a vaccine.