Ravi Vora

Biography

Ravi uses applied and experimental methods to study how environmental policy is understood and how support evolves over time. His work is motivated by the difficulty of addressing climate change, a setting that he believes will offer fresh insights about human nature and economic interactions. In his spare time, he enjoys science writing, rock climbing, and creating visual art.

Job Market Abstract Paper

"Carbon Pricing and Bounded Reasoning"

The failure to attract public support for carbon pricing is commonly blamed on intractable factors like values and ideology. As a result, many now treat the political economy of such policies as an insurmountable obstacle and look to less efficient tools. I demonstrate that support for carbon pricing is not as weak as assumed and distinguish between voting mistakes and true preferences. In a controlled setting, I measure the role of cognitive frictions in opposition to a well-recommended policy known as carbon fee and dividend, in which carbon tax revenue is recycled into lump-sum dividends. Then, I design a policy, iso- metric to fee and dividend, that is structured to bypass these cognitive frictions. The new pricing policy, which I call carbon penalty/reward, generates higher support across the political spectrum, with gains strongest among subjects that demonstrate greater cognitive bias in a controlled policy evaluation game.