Publications

How the Design of Ranking Systems and Ability Affect Physician Effort
with Katharina Huesmann, Christian Waibel, and Daniel Wiesen; Management Science 72(2):1198-1213.
[Paper] [Policy Paper]
While relative performance feedback in the form of rankings appears to be effective in improving healthcare outcomes, it may have either motivating or demotivating effects for individual physicians. Potential factors influencing such effects include a physician's level of ability and the design of the ranking system itself; however, there is limited understanding of these factors. Using a controlled lab-in-the-field experiment with practicing and future physicians as subjects (N=352), we systematically analyze effort within small teams under different ranking systems. Exogenously varying the number and position of the thresholds defining the ranking system, we observe that the addition of a threshold to create a new rank is motivating-i.e., increases effort-only among individuals capable of exceeding that threshold; the effort of other individuals may remain unchanged or even decrease. In particular, a highly granular ranking system with ranks spanning the entire range of possible outcomes maximizes overall physician effort: high thresholds serve to motivate high-ability individuals, while moderate and low thresholds provide opportunities for improvement to lower-ability individuals who cannot reach the high thresholds. Our results suggest that, to motivate their teams effectively, clinical leaders should provide rank feedback using a system under which physicians of all ability types can improve their rank through increased effort.

Working Papers

Soft Floor Auctions: Harnessing Regret to Improve Efficiency and Revenue
with Dirk Bergemann, Kevin Breuer, Peter Cramton, Jack Hirsch and Axel Ockenfels, Revised and Resubmitted at American Economic Review
[Working Paper]
A soft-floor auction asks bidders to accept an opening price to participate in an ascending auction. If no bidder accepts, lower bids are considered using first-price rules. Soft floors are common despite being irrelevant with standard assumptions. When bidders regret losing, soft-floor auctions are more efficient and profitable than standard optimal auctions. Revenue increases as bidders are inclined to accept the opening price to compete in a regret-free ascending auction. Efficiency is improved since having a soft floor allows for a lower hard reserve price, reducing the frequency of no sale. Theory and experiment confirm these motivations from practice.

Who Should Know What and Why? Curated Supply of Political Information
Job Market Paper 2026/27
Draft coming soon
Inaccurate political beliefs persist not only because people encounter falsehoods, but because truths that would correct them are selectively withheld. In a pre-registered experiment with 1,200 representative U.S. adults, senders decide whether to share verified immigration statistics with receivers who hold inaccurate beliefs. Senders provide accurate information at high rates (above 80%), but are 7 percentage points more likely to share facts aligned with their political position than facts that contradict it — even when receivers cannot take political action. This selectivity doubles to 13 percentage points when receivers make a consequential political decision, with the amplification operating primarily through withholding of unaligned information. The baseline alignment gap reflects an expressive preference for belief congruence; its doubling under political action reflects instrumental strategy. This curated truth—the selective provision of accurate information—distorts the information environment through a channel that existing fact-checking and anti-misinformation policies cannot reach.

Can Second Opinions Improve Health Outcomes? Evidence from a Structured Program for Elective Surgery
with Felix Mindl, and Daniel Wiesen
Draft available upon request
We study a structured second opinion program for elective surgeries in Germany using comprehensive administrative claims data for 572 patients (2013–2019). In orthopedics and neurosurgery, first and second experts disagree in 56% of cases, predominantly when surgery is initially recommended but the second physician advises against it. This asymmetric disagreement pattern is consistent with physician-induced demand. Using propensity score matching and event-study designs, we estimate that patients who comply with recommendations against surgery experience substantial reductions in healthcare costs (€526–566 monthly, 1.5× baseline mean) and hospital utilization (0.06–0.07 fewer days monthly) over 18 months, with no adverse health outcomes. Effects concentrate among patients advised against surgery, who save €710–760 monthly without deteriorating health. Avoided surgeries remain avoided—we find no catch-up procedures even 12–18 months post-consultation. Instead, compliers substitute conservative therapy for surgical intervention. We find no comparable benefits when second opinions confirm surgery recommendations. These findings suggest that structured second opinion programs can effectively reduce overtreatment in credence goods markets by institutionally separating diagnosis from treatment, validating theoretical predictions with real-world observational data on realized health outcomes.

Work in Progress

Narrative Interventions and Stem Cell Donor Availability
with Michael Haylock, Patrick Kampkötter, Axel Ockenfels, Till Stange and Daniel Wiesen
Data collection

Choice Architecture, Sorting, and Availability of Stem Cell Donors
with Patrick Kampkötter, Axel Ockenfels, Till Stange and Daniel Wiesen
Data collection

Information acquisition via TikTok and LLMS: The effects on Beliefs, Attitudes and Narratives
with Lara Marie Berger
Pilot data collected

Research Interest

My research investigates how information and institutional design shape decisions in markets. I particularly focus on health economics, auctions, and political economy. I combine laboratory and field experiments, microeconomic theory, and modern causal inference methods.