Laura Schechter

Assistant Professor of Agricultural & Applied Economics
334 Taylor Hall
427 Lorch St.
(608) 262-9482
Fax: (608) 262-4376
lschechter@wisc.edu

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Curriculum Vitae

Research Interest Statement
Schechter’s research lies at the intersection of development economics and behavioral economics. In particular, she focuses on social preferences, and risk and vulnerability. In recent research, Schechter finds evidence that vote-buying is sustainable due to an internalized norm of reciprocity such that citizens who receive money from a candidate feel obliged to vote for him and citizens who do not receive money from a candidate feel a desire not to vote for him. In another area of research, she studies social networks, since they can act as an alternative form of safety net in areas lacking crop insurance, health insurance, unemployment insurance, and pensions. Schechter conducted a set of field experiments and finds that the motivation behind many transfers between villagers is reciprocity rather than altruism.

Combining her interest in trust with experience collecting data, Schechter has looked at trust in the quality of survey data. She studied the use of Benford’s Law to test for data abnormalities. A second related issue is the trust experimental participants have that the experimenter is not deceiving them. She finds that participants behave more erratically in future experiments after experiencing deception.

CDE Research Theme Working Groups
Demography of Inequality
Data and Methodology