Current Fellows
Sivan Rabi Rafaeli, Ph.D. Candidate, Eitan Berglas School of Economics, Tel Aviv University
Email: sivanrabi@mail.tau.ac.il
Title: Social Comparison and Its Implications on Decision Making and Well-being
Standard economic models treat an individual’s welfare as a function of their own consumption and outcomes. In practice, people compare themselves with others, and these comparisons shape their satisfaction and decisions. Firms, platforms, and organizations decide what information about others is visible and how it is presented, so the welfare effects of such disclosure are a central policy question. This dissertation studies three channels of social comparison in three incentivized randomized controlled experiments.
The first chapter asks whether learning that others have a larger choice set reduces welfare even when one’s own options are unchanged. In an online experiment (N=448), participants chose a gift card from six options, and some were told that others chose from 24. Compared with participants who received no such information, they were less satisfied (by 0.284 points on a 1–7 scale; p=0.058), 25.9 percentage points more likely to ask to reconsider their choice (p<0.001), and 16.9 percentage points less likely to keep the card rather than exchange it for discounted cash (p=0.017). For satisfaction, the loss is, in point estimates, 98% as large as the gain from actually expanding the choice set.
The second chapter turns to the role of the algorithm. Platforms such as Instagram curate what their users see, and the question is whether this curation amplifies the economic consequences of social comparison beyond what the content alone would produce. In a planned laboratory experiment (N=500), participants will browse their own Instagram account with either an algorithmic or a chronological feed, or an account containing only nature content, and will then make allocation decisions in a Dictator Game. The design isolates the contribution of the algorithm and speaks to the debate over algorithmic transparency. In a pilot (N=43), browsing an algorithmic feed sharply reduced fairness in the Dictator Game. Participants’ average perceptions of their friends did not change; instead, existing perceptions became stronger predictors of how much they gave.
The third chapter examines meritocratic rankings, which are common in institutions and organizations, from admissions to pay transparency, and are seen as fair. A planned experiment (N=1,250) will test whether even a performance-based gap reduces cooperation with an uninvolved third party.
Taken together, the chapters ask how the way firms and institutions disclose information about others shapes people’s welfare and decisions, an effect that traditional welfare analysis misses. This line of work may inform the regulation of digital platforms and markets and the redesign of ranking and transparency systems in institutions and organizations.
Noa Israeli
PhD candidate, Department of Labor Studies, Tel Aviv University
Supervised by Prof. Haya Stier and Dr. Dafna Gelbgiser
The gendered division of paid labor among families of children with disabilities: A comparative approach
Raising a child with a disability often involves substantial and ongoing care demands, which may constrain parents' labor market participation and working hours. However, these consequences are not necessarily shared equally between mothers and fathers and may vary across countries depending on the policy and institutional support available to families. The dissertation conceptualizes childhood disability not solely as an individual characteristic, but as a family-level condition with implications for how couples organize work and care.
Using comparative data from the European Union Statistics on Income and Living Conditions (EU-SILC), the research examines differences in employment patterns and the division of paid labor between families with and without children with disabilities across European countries. It further investigates how these patterns are shaped by national family and disability policies, gender norms, and policy reforms, as well as whether established family policy regimes adequately capture the institutional contexts relevant to these families.
By integrating perspectives from research on gender inequality, work and family, disability, and social policy, the dissertation connects household-level employment inequalities to broader institutional arrangements. In doing so, it aims to identify the conditions under which social policies mitigate or reinforce gender inequalities among families facing heightened caregiving demands and to contribute to the development of more inclusive family policy frameworks.
