Charles Sprenger
Professor of Economics; Executive Officer for the Social Sciences
Profile
Charlie Sprenger is a behavioral and experimental economist. His research focus is intertemporal decision making and decision making under uncertainty. He designs experiments to test how people behave when faced with various decisions, ranging from food choices to the implementation of vaccination programs and more. His experiments have shown that the standard economic models of behavior are not consistent with how people act in real-life settings, and these findings suggest the need for new public policy strategies.
Sprenger received his bachelor's degree in economics from Stanford University in 2002 and a master's degree from University College London in 2005. He earned his PhD in economics from UC San Diego in 2011 and then served on the economics faculties at Stanford (2011–14) and UC San Diego (2015–20) before joining the Caltech faculty in 2020. He currently serves on the editorial board for the American Economic Review, and he is an associate editor for the Journal of the European Economic Association and Quantitative Economics. He received a Sloan Research Fellowship in 2016.
- Sloan Foundation Fellowship, 2016-2018
- Board of Editors, American Economic Review
- Associate Editor, Journal of the European Economic Association
- Associate Editor, Quantitative Economics
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Selected Publications
- McGranaghan, Christina;Nielsen, Kirby et al. (2024) Distinguishing Common Ratio Preferences from Common Ratio Effects Using Paired Valuation TasksAmerican Economic Review
- Martinez, Seung-Keun;Meier, Stephan et al. (2023) Procrastination in the Field: Evidence from Tax FilingJournal of the European Economic Association
- Andreoni, James;Callen, Michael et al. (2023) Using Preference Estimates to Customize Incentives: An Application to Polio Vaccination Drives in PakistanJournal of the European Economic Association
- Bernheim, B. Douglas;Royer, Rebecca et al. (2022) Robustness of Rank Independence in Risky ChoiceAEA Papers and Proceedings
- Aycinena, Diego;Blazsek, Szabolcs et al. (2022) Intertemporal choice experiments and large-stakes behaviorJournal of Economic Behavior & Organization
- Sadoff, Sally;Samek, Anya et al. (2020) Dynamic Inconsistency in Food Choice: Experimental Evidence from Two Food DesertsReview of Economic Studies
- Goette, Lorenz;Graeber, Thomas et al. (2020) Heterogeneity of Gain-Loss Attitudes and Expectations-Based Reference Points
- Bernheim, B. Douglas;Sprenger, Charles (2020) On the Empirical Validity of Cumulative Prospect Theory: Experimental Evidence of Rank-Independent Probability Weighting
- Andreoni, James;Kuhn, Michael A. et al. (2019) Toward an understanding of the development of time preferences: Evidence from field experimentsJournal of Public Economics
- Cerulli-Harms, Annette;Goette, Lorenz et al. (2019) Randomizing Endowments: An Experimental Study of Rational Expectations and Reference-Dependent PreferencesAmerican Economic Journal: Microeconomics