The JESC Research Group

The Jerusalem Economics, Society, and Culture (JESC) lab, headed by Professor Heffetz, is an economics research group that uses a variety of data sources to study the psychological, social, and cultural aspects of economic behavior, well-being, and policy. We use—and study—various methodologies, including lab and field surveys and experiments, real-world observations, and administrative records.

Our work investigates, for example, what one can and cannot learn from economic and well-being indicators—household expenditures, the unemployment rate, or self-reported happiness—and how governments can use such data to guide policy. In particular, we study how people interpret and respond to survey questions, and how the resulting data are affected. We also study people's economic perceptions, inferences, beliefs, and expectations, how they are related to behavior, and how policymakers can take them into account to design better policies and markets. For example, we study product visibility and conspicuous consumption, how people infer quality from prices, choose relative to reference points, and respond to reminders, deadlines, menu descriptions, guarantees of data privacy, or public information about health risk.

Photo Credit: Revital Topiol

Prof. Ori Heffetz

The Hebrew University of Jerusalem

Personal Website

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Research

Working Papers

Heffetz, Ori, Daniel B. Reeves, and Guy Lichtinger. September 2024. Assessing Nonresponse Bias in Macro Indicators by Combining Para-, Administrative, and Survey Data. [NBER] [SSRN]
Benjamin, Daniel J., Kristen B. Cooper, Ori Heffetz, Miles S. Kimball, and Jiannan Zhou. September 2023. Adjusting for Scale-Use Heterogeneity in Self-Reported Well-Being. [NBER] [SSRN]
Heffetz, Ori, Ted O'Donoghue, and Henry S. Schneider. January 2023. A Note on the Identification of Present Bias and Forgetting from Task-Completion Data. [pdf]
Heffetz, Ori, and Guy Ishai. October 2021. Which Beliefs? Behavior-Predictive Beliefs are Inconsistent with Information-Based Beliefs: Evidence from COVID-19. [NBER] [SSRN] [Web Appendix] [Paper & Web Appendix]
Heffetz, Ori, and Daniel B. Reeves. December 2020. Measuring Unemployment in Crisis: Effects of COVID-19 on Potential Biases in the CPS. [NBER] [SSRN]
Heffetz, Ori. September 2018. Expenditure Visibility and Consumer Behavior: New Evidence. [NBER] [SSRN]

Media: A 3-minute live TV interview on conspicuous Halloween spending, Bloomberg Market “The Close” with Scarlet Fu, October 25, 2019. [Watch].

Published Papers

Ishai, Guy. 2024. Eliciting Beliefs. In Handbook of Experimental Methods in the Social Sciences, edited by Alex Rees-Jones. Edward Elgar, forthcoming. [SSRN]
Dreyfuss, Bnaya, Ofer Glicksohn, Ori Heffetz, and Assaf Romm. 2024. Deferred Acceptance with News Utility. Management Science, forthcoming. [NBER] [SSRN]
Heffetz, Ori, and Yehonatan Caspi. 2024. Measuring Self-Reported Well-Being. In Handbook of Experimental Methods in the Social Sciences, edited by Alex Rees-Jones. Edward Elgar, forthcoming. [SSRN]
Gonczarowski, Yannai, Ori Heffetz, Guy Ishai, and Clayton Thomas. 2024. Describing Deferred Acceptance and Strategyproofness to Participants: Experimental Analysis. Proceedings of the 25th ACM Conference on Economics and Computation (EC '24), July (abstract). [NBER] [arXiv] [Conference website] [Appendix D: all screenshots]
Benjamin, Daniel J., Kristen B. Cooper, Ori Heffetz, and Miles S. Kimball. 2024. From Happiness Data to Economic Conclusions. Annual Review of Economics, 16: 359-391. [Journal] [NBER] [SSRN]
Dreyfuss, Bnaya, Ori Heffetz, Guy Hoffman, Guy Ishai, and Alap Kshirsagar. 2024. Additive vs. Subtractive Earning in Shared Human-Robot Work Environments. Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, 217: 692-704. [Journal] [SSRN]
Gonczarowski, Yannai, Ori Heffetz, and Clayton Thomas. 2023. Strategyproofness-Exposing Mechanism Descriptions. Proceedings of the 24th ACM Conference on Economics and Computation (EC '23), July: 782 (abstract). [NBER] [arXiv] [Conference website] [Online Experimental Materials]
Dekel, Inbal, Rachel Cummings, Ori Heffetz, and Katrina Ligett. 2023. The Privacy Elasticity of Behavior: Conceptualization and Application. Proceedings of the 24th ACM Conference on Economics and Computation (EC '23), July: 516 (abstract). [NBER] [SSRN] [Conference website] [Web Appendix]
Benjamin, Daniel J., Jakina Debnam Guzman, Marc Fleurbaey, Ori Heffetz, and Miles S. Kimball. 2023. What Do Happiness Data Mean? Theory and Survey Evidence. Journal of the European Economic Association, 21 (6): 2377-2412. [Journal] [NBER] [SSRN] [Web Appendix] [Individual Responses Appendix]
Heffetz, Ori, and Matthew Rabin. 2023. Estimating Perceptions of the Relative COVID Risk of Different Social-Distancing Behaviors from Respondents’ Pairwise Assessments. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 120 (7). [Journal] [NBER] [SSRN]
Heffetz, Ori. 2022. What will it take to get to acceptable privacy-accuracy combinations? Harvard Data Science Review, Special Issue 2. [Journal]
Feldman, Naomi E., and Ori Heffetz. 2022. A Grant to Every Citizen: Survey Evidence of the Impact of a Direct Government Payment in Israel. National Tax Journal, 75 (2): 229-263. [Journal] [NBER] [SSRN]
Heffetz, Ori, Ted O’Donoghue, and Henry S. Schneider. 2022. Reminders Work, But for Whom? Evidence from New York City Parking-Ticket Recipients. American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, 14 (4): 343-370. [Journal] [NBER] [SSRN] [Web Appendix] [pdf]
Dreyfuss, Bnaya, Ori Heffetz, and Matthew Rabin. 2022. Expectations-Based Loss Aversion May Help Explain Seemingly Dominated Choices in Strategy-Proof Mechanisms. American Economic Journal: Microeconomics, 14 (4): 515-555. [Journal] [NBER] [SSRN]

Video: a 48-minute presentation, Simons Institute Workshop on Information Design and Data Science, Berkeley, October 2, 2019. [Watch]

Heffetz, Ori. 2021. Are Reference Points Merely Lagged Beliefs Over Probabilities? Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, 181: 252-269. [NBER] [SSRN] [Web Appendix]
Benjamin, Daniel J., Kristen B. Cooper, Ori Heffetz, and Miles S. Kimball. 2019. Self-Reported Wellbeing Indicators Are a Valuable Complement to Traditional Economic Indicators but Aren’t Yet Ready to Compete with Them. Behavioural Public Policy, 4 (2): 198-209. [Journal] [SSRN]
Benjamin, Daniel J., Kristen B. Cooper, Ori Heffetz, and Miles S. Kimball. 2019. A Well-Being Snapshot in a Changing World. American Economic Review Papers and Proceedings, 109: 344-349. [Journal] [pdf + appendix]
Kshirsagar, Alap, Bnaya Dreyfuss, Guy Ishai, Ori Heffetz, and Guy Hoffman. 2019. Monetary-Incentive Competition between Humans and Robots: Experimental Results. Proceedings of the 14th ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction (HRI’19), IEEE, pages 95-103. [SSRN] [Conference website] [pdf] [Supplemental Materials]
Heffetz, Ori, and Daniel B. Reeves. 2019. Difficulty to Reach Respondents and Nonresponse Bias: Evidence from Large Government Surveys. Review of Economics and Statistics, 101 (1): 176-191. [Journal] [NBER] [SSRN] [Web Appendix]
Benjamin, Daniel J., Ori Heffetz, Miles S. Kimball, and Derek Lougee. 2017. The Relationship Between the Normalized Gradient Addition Mechanism and Quadratic Voting. Public Choice, 172 (1): 233-263. [Journal]
Benjamin, Daniel J., Kristen B. Cooper, Ori Heffetz, and Miles S. Kimball. 2017. Challenges in Constructing a Survey-Based Well-Being Index. American Economic Review Papers and Proceedings, 107 (5): 81-85. [Journal] [NBER] [SSRN]
Benjamin, Daniel J., Ori Heffetz, Miles S. Kimball, and Alex Rees-Jones. 2014. Can Marginal Rates of Substitution Be Inferred From Happiness Data? Evidence from Residency Choices. American Economic Review, 104 (11): 3498-3528. [Journal] [NBER] [SSRN] [Web Appendix] [Survey Appendix]
Heffetz, Ori, and John A. List. 2014. Is the Endowment Effect an Expectations Effect? Journal of the European Economic Association, 12 (5): 1396-1422. [SSRN] [Web Appendix]

An older version circulated as "Is the Endowment Effect a Reference Effect?". [NBER]

Benjamin, Daniel J., Ori Heffetz, Miles S. Kimball, and Nichole Szembrot. 2014. Beyond Happiness and Satisfaction: Toward Well-Being Indices Based on Stated Preference. American Economic Review, 104 (9): 2698-2735. [Journal] [SSRN] [Web Appendix]

Media: FT Alphaville, Ori Heffetz's op-ed for Cornell Enterprise (page 14), and his piece in Hebrew for Alaxon.

Audio: Simon Tulett interviews Matthew Adler, Ori Heffetz, and Justin Wolfers (28 minutes; October, 2012).

[mp3]
Heffetz, Ori, and Katrina Ligett. 2014. Privacy and Data-Based Research. Journal of Economic Perspectives, 28 (2): 75-98. [Journal]

An earlier version containing slightly more technical detail and more references: [NBER] [SSRN]

Heffetz, Ori, and Matthew Rabin. 2013. Conclusions Regarding Cross-Group Differences in Happiness Depend on Difficulty of Reaching Respondents. American Economic Review, 103 (7): 3001-3021. [Journal] [SSRN]

Editors’ Choice: Science

Benjamin, Daniel J., Ori Heffetz, Miles S. Kimball, and Nichole Szembrot. 2013. Aggregating Local Preferences to Guide Marginal Policy Adjustments. American Economic Review Papers and Proceedings, 103 (3): 605-610. [Journal] [SSRN]
Benjamin, Daniel J., Ori Heffetz, Miles S. Kimball, and Alex Rees-Jones. 2012. What Do You Think Would Make You Happier? What Do You Think You Would Choose? American Economic Review, 102 (5): 2083-2110. [Journal] [SSRN]

An older version circulated as "Do People Seek to Maximize Happiness? Evidence from New Surveys." [NBER at SSRN] [Web Appendix]

Media: The Economist

Heffetz, Ori. 2012. Who Sees What? Demographics and the Visibility of Consumer Expenditures. Journal of Economic Psychology, 33 (4): 801-818. [Journal] [SSRN]
Heffetz, Ori. 2011. A Test of Conspicuous Consumption: Visibility and Income Elasticities. Review of Economics and Statistics, 93 (4): 1101-1117. (Lead article). [Journal] [SSRN]

An older version circulated as "Conspicuous Consumption and Expenditure Visibility: Measurement and Application."

Media: New York Times, Haaretz.

Heffetz, Ori, and Robert H. Frank. 2011. Preferences for Status: Evidence and Economic Implications. In Handbook of Social Economics, Vol. 1A, edited by Jess Benhabib, Matthew O. Jackson, and Alberto Bisin, pages 69-91. The Netherlands: North-Holland. [Journal] [SSRN]
Heffetz, Ori, and Moses Shayo. 2009. How Large Are Non-Budget-Constraint Effects of Prices on Demand? American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, 1 (4): 170-199. [Journal] [pdf] [SSRN]

Media: New York Times, Psychology Today, Inc., TheMarker, etc.

Current Members

Previous Members

Photo Credit: Revital Topiol