Los Angeles Behavioral Economics Laboratory

Home
United States
Los Angeles, CA
Los Angeles Behavioral Economics Laboratory

The Los Angeles Behavioral Economics Laboratory (LABEL) is dedicated to the study of decision-making

LABEL studies individual decision-making and strategic interactions through controlled experiments. We focus on understanding the motivations of choices and we use a variety of techniques to collect `non choice' data, including reaction times and physiological responses. Most of our studies take place at USC with participants from our LABEL - USC subject pool. We also work in partnership with other laboratories and institutions to study behavior over the life cycle.

04/08/2026

🎓 LABEL Behavioral Lab: Experiments with Kids

Our team conducted experiments with 3rd and 4th grade students at LYCEE INTERNATIONAL DE LOS ANGELES 👧👦 running a Contagion Experiment. Through this, we study: strategic behavior, contagion dynamics and the role of cognition in decision-making.
Understanding decision-making early in life helps us uncover how strategic thinking, risk, and social interactions develop.

Amazing engagement and intuition from the students throughout the sessions.
A big thank you to the students, teachers, and staff for making this possible!

03/27/2026

Check the full post on: https://www.linkedin.com/posts/psychology-behavioraleconomics-share-7443167644536475648-hJcV?utm_source=share&utm_medium=member_ios&rcm=ACoAADUNmbIBRgxnh1PWWKyNRU88X_uFfaX-wMU

03/20/2026

✨ Meet Our Team : Susie Liu ✨

We are excited to introduce Susie, one of our Undergraduate Research Assistants at LABEL!

Susie L. is a sophomore at USC double majoring in Economics/Mathematics and Cognitive Science. Her academic interests lie at the intersection of behavioral economics and decision-making under risk, where she is eager to explore how individuals make choices in complex environments.

We’re very happy to have her on the LABEL team and appreciate the contributions she is already making to our research projects.

#

03/13/2026

🎓 LABEL ECON 693 Seminar

Today we are pleased to host two distinguished scholars presenting their latest research at the LABEL ECON 693 Seminar:

Aldo Rustichini (University of Minnesota)
Title: 𝑁𝑎𝑡𝑢𝑟𝑒, 𝑁𝑢𝑟𝑡𝑢𝑟𝑒 𝑎𝑛𝑑 𝑀𝑎𝑟𝑘𝑒𝑡𝑠
His work develops a micro-founded intergenerational framework that jointly models genetic inheritance, cultural transmission, and assortative mating. The paper connects biological mechanisms such as recombination and Mendelian sampling with social processes like parental influence and matching in marriage markets. By integrating these forces, the model provides new insights into how behavioral traits persist across generations and how biological and environmental factors interact in shaping long-run trait distributions.

Daniel Benjamin (UCLA)
Title: 𝐴𝑑𝑗𝑢𝑠𝑡𝑖𝑛𝑔 𝑓𝑜𝑟 𝐻𝑒𝑡𝑒𝑟𝑜𝑔𝑒𝑛𝑒𝑖𝑡𝑦 𝑖𝑛 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑈𝑠𝑒 𝑜𝑓 𝑆𝑢𝑏𝑗𝑒𝑐𝑡𝑖𝑣𝑒 𝑆𝑐𝑎𝑙𝑒𝑠
Self-reported survey responses may be biased if individuals interpret response scales differently. This paper formalizes and extends the theory of anchoring vignettes to adjust for scale-use heterogeneity. Using data from the Understanding America Study (~10,000 respondents), the authors show that differences in scale interpretation can often be approximated as linear transformations and propose a new econometric estimator to correct for these differences in regression analyses.

🌟 Thank you to our speaker and to everyone who joined us for a stimulating discussion on behavioral traits, intergenerational dynamics, and measurement in survey data!

03/06/2026

📊 Final data collection session of the Contagion Network Experiment at the Lycée International de Los Angeles (LILA) 🎓

Today’s session allowed us to include the remaining students who were not able to participate during the previous experimental days, ensuring that all scheduled participants had the opportunity to take part in the study.

Across multiple sessions, students engaged in a network-based experimental environment designed to explore how individuals make decisions under risk, social exposure, and strategic interaction.

A sincere thank you to the students, faculty, and staff at LILA for their enthusiasm and collaboration throughout this project.

It has been a pleasure to run this experiment with such engaged participants. ✨

02/26/2026

🎓 LABEL ECON 693 Seminar

Last week, we were delighted to welcome 𝗝𝗮𝘀𝗼𝗻 𝗦𝗼𝗺𝗲𝗿𝘃𝗶𝗹𝗹𝗲 (𝗨𝗖 𝗦𝗮𝗻𝘁𝗮 𝗕𝗮𝗿𝗯𝗮𝗿𝗮) for an engaging session of the LABEL Seminar Series.

Title: “Understanding Performance Declines”
Within task performance declines are pervasive across diverse settings from standardized testing to healthcare yet remain poorly understood. In this paper, he investigates why performance deteriorates over the course of a task using an online math experiment. Participants were randomly assigned to receive enhanced incentives “bonus boosts” on the first, middle, or last third of questions and their preferences over timing were elicited.
The findings reveal substantial declines in performance. Accuracy falls by approximately 10 percentage points from beginning to end. Ex ante, participants fail to anticipate this decline and ex post, they recognize only about half of its magnitude. Nearly 60 percent report no preference over the timing of bonuses, and willingness to pay remains constant across options despite the fact that receiving bonuses early increases expected earnings by about 9 percent.

The results suggest that falling cognitive effort accounts for roughly half of the decline, pointing to optimization failures as a novel explanation for within-person performance deterioration.

🌟 Thank you to our speaker and to everyone who joined us for a stimulating discussion during the seminar.

02/19/2026

This week, we had the pleasure of running our Contagion Network Experiment at the LYCEE INTERNATIONAL DE LOS ANGELES (LILA)

Over multiple sessions, students participated in a dynamic network-based experiment exploring:

• Decision-making under social exposure
• Strategic interaction within structured networks
• Risk, contagion, and behavioral adaptation.

We are now on our final day of data collection, and it has been incredibly rewarding to witness students engage with complex strategic environments in real time.

A sincere thank you to the students, faculty, and staff at LILA for their collaboration, professionalism, and enthusiasm throughout the sessions.

On to data analysis. 📊

02/13/2026

🔬 Pilot Complete: Contagion Experiment

This week, we successfully ran the pilot sessions of our new Contagion Network Experiment.

The study examines how individuals make decisions under social exposure and dynamic risk within structured networks. Participants faced repeated choices with evolving health states and strategic interdependence.

Data collection phase coming soon! ☺️

02/06/2026

🎓 LABEL ECON 693 Seminar

We were delighted to welcome 𝗢𝗹𝗶𝘃𝗶𝗲𝗿 𝗔𝗿𝗺𝗲𝗻𝘁𝗶𝗲𝗿 (𝗖𝗵𝗮𝗽𝗺𝗮𝗻 𝗨𝗻𝗶𝘃𝗲𝗿𝘀𝗶𝘁𝘆) for an engaging session of the LABEL ECON 693 Seminar Series.

Title: “𝘊𝘢𝘯 𝘋𝘪𝘴𝘤𝘰𝘶𝘯𝘵 𝘞𝘪𝘯𝘥𝘰𝘸 𝘚𝘵𝘪𝘨𝘮𝘢 𝘣𝘦 𝘊𝘶𝘳𝘦𝘥? 𝘈𝘯 𝘌𝘹𝘱𝘦𝘳𝘪𝘮𝘦𝘯𝘵𝘢𝘭 𝘐𝘯𝘷𝘦𝘴𝘵𝘪𝘨𝘢𝘵𝘪𝘰𝘯”

A core responsibility of the Federal Reserve is to ensure financial stability by acting as the lender of last resort through its Discount Window. Yet, in practice, the Discount Window has been underutilized due to persistent stigma. In the paper, he combines theory and experimental evidence to examine whether and how this stigma can be reduced. The results show that behavioral inertia makes stigma difficult to eliminate once established. However, the introduction of a new backstop facility can meaningfully mitigate stigma, aligning closely with the Federal Reserve’s real-world experience.
(JEL: E58, G01, C92)

🌟 Thank you to our speaker and to everyone who joined us for a stimulating discussion on financial stability, behavioral frictions, and policy design!

01/31/2026

Hi Everybody, we are very proud to welcome Nicolas Neal in the lab. He is currently running an independent study and needs your help to fill a short survey! WE would very much appreciate your help! Here is his intro:

Hello all! My name is Nicolas Neal, a current Easterlin Fellow currently preparing a project studying protest behaviors in average consumers. An essential part of my research comes in the form of a survey that I have meticulously prepared to measure both preference and reactions to mitigants. I thank you very much for your input and cannot wait to see what the outcomes of the survey are! Thank you.

Here is a link to the survey: https://lnkd.in/g9F4mQ2t

Address

Department Of Economics/University Of Southern California/3620 South Vermont Avenue
Los Angeles, CA
CA90089-0253

Website

http://label-laboratory.org/

Alerts

Be the first to know and let us send you an email when Los Angeles Behavioral Economics Laboratory posts news and promotions. Your email address will not be used for any other purpose, and you can unsubscribe at any time.

Want your university to be the top-listed University in Los Angeles?