The contact hypothesis is a leading theory in social psychology--the idea is that interpersonal contact between groups, under favorable conditions, reduces prejudice. What do we learn from the new wave of pre-registered contact experiments? 🧵

🚨 New working paper! How well do people predict the results of studies? @sdellavi and I leverage data from the first 100 studies to have been posted on the SSPP, containing 1,482 key questions, on which over 50,000 forecasts were placed. Some surprising results below.... 🧵👇

To apply: Please email your CV, a copy of your most recent academic transcript, and 1 paragraph explaining your fit for the role to mutresearchteam@gmail.com. Thanks!

Who is this role for: those looking to gain experience in behavioural economics, designing and implementing lab-in-the-field experiments and primary data collection. PhD aspirants or students wanting to build their research profiles are a good fit.

Duration: January-July 2026 (with a possibility of extension) Location: Ahmedabad, Gujarat (with field work in nearby areas), ability to speak Hindi is required. Pay: competitive

👩🏽‍💻 **Short-Term Job Opportunity** Myself, Anahita Karandikar (UBC), and Jeff Weaver (USC) are hiring a Research Support Assistant/Research Consultant to help with a lab-in-the-field experiment in Ahmedabad, Gujarat. See below for details, and feel free to retweet 🙂

I’m excited to share my job market paper for the 2025-2026 market! In a real-effort experiment, participants working solely for money completed 23% more tasks than those offered the same monetary reward plus a charitable incentive (p < 0.02) 🤯 Thread below (1/)

🆕 How youth camps helped build social cohesion in India Today on VoxDev w/ @arkdevghosh (@DukeEcon), @prerna394 (@ubcVSE), @hmmlowe (@ubcVSE) & Gareth Nellis (@UCSDPoliSci):

We are hiring at @ubcVSE two assistant professors. Focus on international trade/spatial and applied micro (dev, labor, env, etc). Fantastic department, great city, democratic country. Please apply! https://t.co/2iYBwVmsYH

We’re hiring @ LSE ID We have *multiple* economist positions—assistant and associate professor—here at LSE International Development. Our economics group is expanding. We have exciting stuff planned. We’re keen on big picture economists. DMs open. https://t.co/xd1O54HOK3

We (me, @Jeff_Weaver_, @anahitark) are looking to hire a Gujarati-speaking paid intern and RA to help with lab-in-the-field work on barriers to trade in rural Gujarat. Full details in the link, and feel free to help us by RTing!

Hiring a pre-doc for work in dev, pe, and econ history. Please apply :) https://t.co/trbnpIG4yd @econ_ra

👥 Does intergroup contact reduce prejudice? CEGA Faculty Affiliate @hmmlowe finds that: 📉 Effects smaller than previously thought 🧩 Meeting Allport conditions doesn’t guarantee success 💡 Stronger impact on individual perception than groups 📖:

🚨Open Phil is hiring for some awesome roles to build out our >$120m Abundance and Growth Fund 🚨 Apply for a chance to work with @mattsclancy on accelerating scientific & technological progress and boosting economic growth https://t.co/d9oSfoHvkG

J-PAL is once again accepting self-nominations to join our network and become an invited researcher. The application process is currently open and will close on August 1st. Learn more about the self-nomination process:

Children that work in markets in India are good at maths when a customer makes a complicated request, but bad when facing an abstract maths problem as presented in school. Children that don't work in markets show the opposite pattern. Very cool. https://t.co/Rcwd3W1SAH

Presenting a broad set of stylized facts about developing country labor markets, synthesizing the recent literature, and highlighting promising directions for future work, from @emilybreza and @supKaur https://t.co/o9Dlja1h35

Cool paper in Nature using data for a few million kids in France: no gender gap in Maths test scores at the start of first grade, big gap by the end. https://t.co/3NHxfEcKy6

🚨 Thrilled to share that our paper, "Sexual Harassment in Public Spaces and Police Patrols: Experimental Evidence from Urban India," is now in print at the @QJEHarvard! 🇮🇳🚔👩🏽‍🦰 With Sofia Amaral, @g_borker, Nathan Fiala, Anjani Kumar, & @micasviatschi 🧵👇 @NUCSSH @NUEcon

The takeaway is that cross-party peer influence exists, but it is limited, and consistent with a cue-taking channel, rather than persuasion. We thank the Icelandic MPs who replied to our survey, and the (likely) polisci referees that showed some kindness to a couple of

After a long road, excited to see my work with @dongheejo68 published in @The_JOP. In Iceland, a lottery determines which politicians sit next to each other. We find that different-party politicians randomly assigned to sit next to each other are slightly more likely to vote