Soft Floor Auctions: Harnessing Regret to Improve Efficiency and Revenue

with Dirk Bergemann, Kevin Breuer, Peter Cramton, Jack Hirsch and Axel Ockenfels; conditionally accepted 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.

How the Design of Ranking Systems and Ability Affect Physician Effort

with Katharina Huesmann, Christian Waibel, and Daniel Wiesen; Management Science vol. 72, no. 2 (2026): 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.

Who Should Know What and Why? Curated Supply of Political Information

Job Market Paper (Early Draft)

The information environment can be distorted not only by the spread of falsehoods but also by the selective supply of truths. I study how citizens curate which accurate information others receive based on political alignment. In a pre-registered experiment with 1,200 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 approximately 8 percentage points more likely to share facts aligned with their political position than facts that contradict it, even when receivers do not take a downstream political action in the experiment. This selectivity approximately doubles when receivers make a political decision, with the amplification operating primarily through withholding of unaligned information. The theoretical framework organizes the interpretation: baseline selectivity reflects a preference for belief congruence, while its amplification under political action is consistent with an instrumental motive. This curated truth—the selective provision of accurate information that favors the sender's political position—distorts the information environment through a channel not targeted by current policy interventions focused on false content.

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 analyze a structured second-opinion program for elective surgeries in Germany using administrative claims data (2013–2019). The program institutionally separates diagnosis from treatment: physicians providing second opinions give independent assessments but are banned from performing the treatment themselves. In orthopedics and neurosurgery, first and second-opinion physicians disagree in 56% of cases. The disagreement is strongly asymmetric: second physicians contradict 63% of surgery recommendations but only 14% of recommendations against surgery—consistent with physician-induced demand. Seventy percent of patients comply with second-opinion recommendations. Using propensity score matching and patient fixed-effects event-study designs, we estimate that compliance reduces monthly health expenditures by about €431–478 (approximately baseline mean), the number of outpatient visits by 0.61, and hospital days by 0.06 over 18 months, with no adverse effects on sick leave. The effects concentrate among patients advised against surgery, who save €710–760 monthly without health deterioration. For these patients, surgeries remain avoided throughout the 18 months following consultation, with symptoms managed instead through conservative therapies. Taken together, these findings provide evidence that structured second-opinion programs effectively curb overtreatment by separating diagnosis from treatment, translating theoretical predictions into realized health and spending outcomes.

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 on Digital Platforms: The Effect on Beliefs and Behavior

with Lara Marie Berger
Pilot data collected

My research investigates how institutional design shapes individual behavior and how behavioral insights can improve institutions. I particularly focus on health economics, auctions, and political economy. I combine laboratory and field experiments, microeconomic theory, and modern causal inference methods.