Marta Serra-Garcia

Serra-Garcia conducts research in behavioral and experimental economics. Her research focuses on how individuals acquire and transmit information and how this in turn affects their preferences and behavior. Among others, her research studies how the desire to preserve a positive self-image shapes individuals’ ethical decision-making, such as lying and charitable giving. Serra-Garcia’s research has been published in numerous journals including American Economic Review, Management Science, and Psychological Science. She has also been recognized as the 2020 Best 40 under 40 MBA Professors.

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.

Selected Publications

Serra-Garcia, Marta and Nora Szech. “Incentives and Defaults Can Increase COVID-19 Vaccine Intentions and Test Demand”, Management Science, forthcoming (https://doi.org/10.1287/mnsc.2022.4405)

Serra-Garcia, Marta. “Risk Attitudes and Conflict in the Household,” Economic Journal 132 (642), 2022, 767-795.

Serra-Garcia, Marta and Uri Gneezy. “Mistakes, Overconfidence and the Effect of Sharing in Detecting Lies,” American Economic Review 11 (10), 2021, 3160-3183.

Serra-Garcia, Marta and Nora Szech. “The (In)Elasticity of Moral Ignorance,” Management Science, forthcoming (https://doi.org/10.1287/mnsc.2021.4153).

Andreoni, Jim and Marta Serra-Garcia. “The Pledging Puzzle: How Can Revocable Promises Increase Charitable Giving?,” Management Science, 2021, 67 (10), 5969-6627.

Andreoni, Jim and Marta Serra-Garcia. “Time-Inconsistent Charitable Giving,” Journal of Public Economics, 198, 104391, 2021.

Serra-Garcia, Marta and Uri Gneezy. “Non-replicable Publications Are Cited More than Replicable Ones,” Science Advances 7 (21), 2021.

Serra-Garcia, Marta, Hansen, Karsten and Uri Gneezy. “Can Short Psychological Interventions Affect Educational Performance? Revisiting the Effect of Self-Affirmation Interventions,” Psychological Science, 2020, 31 (7): 865-872.

Gneezy, Uri, Saccardo, Silvia, Serra-Garcia, Marta and Roel van Veldhuizen. “Bribing the Self” Games and Economic Behavior, 2020, 120: 311-324.  

Lührmann, Melanie, Serra-Garcia, Marta and Joachim Winter. “The Impact of Financial Education on Adolescents’ Intertemporal Choices,” American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, 2018, 10 (3): 309-332.

Brown, Martin and Marta Serra-Garcia. “The Threat of Exclusion and Implicit Contracting,” Management Science, 2017, 63 (12): 4081-4100.

Kalayci, Kenan and Marta Serra-Garcia. “Complexity and Biases”, Experimental Economics, 2016, 1: 31-50.

Lahno, Amrei, Serra-Garcia, Marta, D’Exelle, Ben and Arjan Verschoor. “Conflicting Risk Attitudes”, Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization (2015) 118, 136-149.

Lahno, Amrei and Marta Serra-Garcia. “Peer Effects in Risk Taking: Envy or Conformity?”, Journal of Risk and Uncertainty, 2015, 50: 73-95.

Lührmann, Melanie, Serra-Garcia, Marta and Joachim Winter. “Teaching teenagers in finance: does it work?” Journal of Banking and Finance, 2015, 54: 160-174.

Gneezy, Uri, Rockenbach, Bettina and Marta Serra-Garcia. “Measuring Lying Aversion”, Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization, 2013, 93: 293-300.

Serra-Garcia, Marta, van Damme, Eric and Jan Potters. “Lying about What You Know or about What You Do?”, Journal of the European Economic Association, 2013, 11 (5): 1204-1229.

Serra-Garcia, Marta, van Damme, Eric and Jan Potters. “Hiding an Inconvenient Truth: Lies and Vagueness”, Games and Economic Behavior 2011, 73: 244-261.

 

 Working Papers

• Serra-Garcia and Szech (2021). “Choice architecture and incentives increase COVID-19 vaccine take-up and testing” Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3818182.
• Saccardo and Serra-Garcia (2020).  "Cognitive Flexibility or Moral Commitment? Evidence of Anticipated Belief Distortion", CESifo Working Paper No. 8529.

 

Book Chapters

• Serra-Garcia (2018). "Lying in Economics" (2018), The Oxford Handbook of Lying. Oxford University Press.
• Andreoni, Koessler and Serra-Garcia (2018).  "Who Gives? The Roles of Empathy and Impulsivity" , The Economics of Philanthropy: Donations and Fundraising. MIT Press.
• Gneezy and Serra-Garcia. “Lies in disguise – an experimental study on cheating (by Urs Fischbacher and Franziska Föllmi-Heusi)," with Uri Gneezy. The Art of Experimental Economics – Twenty Top Papers Reviewed (eds. G. Charness and M. Pingle). Routledge. 

Research Areas

• Behavioral Economics
• Judgment & Decision Making 
• Misinformation
• Prosocial behavior

Industry Areas

• Communication and Media
• Philanthropy