Assist. Prof. Tristan Gagnon-Bartsch, Ph.D.

Interpersonal Projection Bias and Distorted Inference

Tristan Gagnon-Bartsch’s research interests lie in behavioral economics, microeconomic theory, and experimental economics. Much of his work studies various aspects of belief formation and learning. His current research agenda focuses on understanding the economic implications that arise when people hold inaccurate beliefs about others. On the theoretical side, this work examines implications for social learning, auctions, and trade. On the experimental side, this work explores topics related to learning, labor supply, evaluations of others, and inference from polls. Mr. Gagnon-Bartsch is also interested in attention and information acquisition.

While visiting CES, Mr. Gagnon-Bartsch will work on several recent projects related to biased learning and inference. These projects study the implications of a common misperception called “interpersonal projection bias”, where people overestimate how similar others’ preferences and attitudes are to their own. The first project (“Heterogeneous Tastes and Social (Mis)learning” with Benjamin Bushong) experimentally examines how people learn from others’ actions in an environment with naturally occurring heterogeneity in tastes. The results indicate that people tend to infer from others’ actions under the (false) presumption that others share their tastes. A second project (“The Person or the Situation: Projection Bias and Inference about Others” with Benjamin Bushong and Jeongbin Kim) experimentally studies whether projection bias leads to errors in inferences about others’ ability and personality traits, and thus whether this bias contributes to stereotyping. A third project (“Taste Projection in Bilateral Trade” with Marco Pagnozzi and Antonio Rosato) theoretically examines trade under asymmetric information and investigates how the valuation structure among traders determines when projection bias either improves or harms efficiency. Mr. Gagnon-Bartsch’s work has been featured in outlets including American Economic Review, American Economic Journal: Microeconomics, Journal of Economic Theory, and Management Science.

Tristan Gagnon-Bartsch is an Assistant Professor of Economics at Florida State University. He is currently visiting the University of Iowa. Mr. Gagnon-Bartsch was previously a research fellow and postdoctoral fellow at Harvard University and Harvard Business School. He received his PhD in Economics from the University of California, Berkeley,s and holds a BA in Economics and Mathematics, also from UC Berkeley.