Most compelling rogue-AI story I’ve encountered.

Goes faster at various points than I can readily believe, but perhaps that's to be expected. A useful illustration of some of the many things that could happen.

Remarkably, observing past actions doesn't matter. Players contribute more to future generations simply when the next generation can potentially give back—even if past generosity is hidden.

We vary treatments by changing the ability of future players to give back and the information available about what others did. Theory predicts a clear link: knowing past generosity should incentivize giving forward.

Each player represents a "generation" and decides how much of their resources to pass forward to the next player and—crucially—how much to pass backward to the previous one.

The backlash effect even extends to a stronger preference for meat relative to plant-based meat when people are exposed to cultured meat.

These attitudes depend a lot on the social environment-exposure to strongly negative attitudes toward cultured meat can enhance this effect (while some positive messages we study do not succeed in counteracting this).

Working paper out!

Does cultured meat make people more open to animal welfare concerns with factory farming? Models of motivated beliefs (or cognitive dissonance) would generally predict yes (substitute = less attachment to meat). We find no!

📈Job market paper📉

Excited to finally share my JMP! I study whether and why policy choices are stubbornly persistent.

Example: Oregon has an income tax, but not Washington—seemingly because of nearly century-old choices. Is this typical?

Read the paper: www.zachfreitasgroff.com/FreitasGroff...

Neat. Evidence that legal same-sex marriage decreased enrollment in priestly studies (because fewer gay men avoid coming out):

digitalcommons.chapman.edu/cgi/viewcont...