Marta Serra Garcia

Research Areas

Behavioral Economics
Microeconomics
Social Norms
Risk Taking

Serra-Garcia conducts research in behavioral and experimental economics. Her research focuses on the importance of morals and social norms in economic decision-making. She studies (1) how individuals preserve their identity as moral and generous when there is an incentive to behave unethically or selfishly, (2) how the desire to conform to others affects risk taking, and (3) the impact of incentives to defect on the formation of long-term trust relationships. She also studies the determinants of mistakes in economic decision-making, focusing on the role of complexity and financial education. Serra-Garcia has been published in numerous journals including the Journal of the European Economic Association, Management Science and Games and Economic Behavior.

Prior to coming to the Rady School, Serra-Garcia was an assistant professor at the University of Munich. Serra-Garcia earned her Ph.D. and M.Sc. in Economics at Tilburg University. She earned a B.A. in Business Administration from the Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Barcelona.

Publications

"Hiding an Inconvenient Truth: Lies and Vagueness", with Eric van Damme and Jan Potters, Games and Economic Behavior 73 (2011), 244-261.

"Lying about What You Know or about What You Do?", with Eric van Damme and Jan Potters, Journal of the European Economic Association (2013) 11 (5), 1204-1229.

"Measuring Lying Aversion", with Uri Gneezy and Bettina Rockenbach, Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization (2013) 93, 293-300.

"Peer Effects in Risk Taking: Envy or Conformity?", with Amrei Lahno, Journal of Risk and Uncertainty (2015) 50, 73-95.

"Complexity and Biases", with Kenan Kalayci, Experimental Economics (2016) 1, 31-50.

"The Threat of Exclusion and Implicit Contracting," with Martin Brown, forthcoming, Management Science.

Working Papers

"The Impact of Financial Education on Adolescents’ Intertemporal Choice," with Melanie Lührmann and Joachim Winter.

"Bribing the Self" with Uri Gneezy, Silvia Saccardo and Roel van Veldhuizen.

"Time-Inconsistent Charitable Giving" with Jim Andreoni.