Short bio

Juan D. Carrillo is a Professor of Economics at the University of Southern California and a Research Fellow in the Industrial Organization and Public Policy programs of the Center for Economic Policy Research (CEPR). Before coming to USC, he was an Assistant Professor at the Free University of Brussels and an Associate Professor at Columbia Business School. Professor Carrillo has worked in Mechanism Design, Theory of Organizations, Political Economics and Behavioral Economics. He has published his research in leading journals such as the American Economic Review, the Review of Economics Studies and the Journal of Economic Theory and edited two books in Psychology and Economics. His current research interests include Neuroeconomic Theory and Experimental Economics.

Neuroeconomic Theory

This interdisciplinary line of investigation combines research from subfields in neuroscience and economics. Experimental neuroscience and neurobiology provide detailed evidence of the functionality, interconnectivity and physiological limitations of the brain systems involved in the process of decision-making. Microeconomic theory supplies the toolkit to build simple economic models that incorporate these system interactions and well-defined constraints in the mechanisms of choice.

Neuroeconomic theory (representative publications)

More information can be found in the website of our neuroeconomic laboratory:

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Theoretical REsearch in Neuroeconomic Decision-making (TREND)

Experimental Economics

Our laboratory departs from most traditional experimental economics labs in two respects. First, we put a special emphasis on the collection and analysis of "non choice" data. These include reaction times, attentional data (mouse-tracking and eye-tracking), electrodermal responses, brain activity and other physiological measures. Second, we study populations that have been traditionally neglected in most economic experiments. These include children, older adults and subjects with diseases.

Experiments with children (representative publications)

We have been recently interested in studying decision making from a developmental perspective

Experiments using mousetracking (representative publications)

Experiments in time perception (representative publications)

More information can be found in the website of our experimental laboratory:

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Los Angeles Behavioral Economics Laboratory (LABEL)

"Older" research

Trained as a Microeconomic theorist, I have worked in the past on a variety of topics on Mechanism Design, Theory of Organizations, Political Economics and Behavioral Economics (and some hobby interest in Sports Economics).

In an often neglected precursor to the so-called "Bayesian persuasion" literature, my co-author and I proposed a two-state, two-signal, sequential sampling model of public information acquisition. The paper shows that a sender can affect the action of a receiver by controlling the flow of information. This result has become the central idea of the subsequent literature.

Prior to Neuroeconomic theory, I was interested in using insights from Psychology to understand economic behavior. Using the (at the time unpopular) quasi-hyperbolic time preferences, my co-author and I proposed a theory to explain why an individual would remain strategically ignorant of his own utility of consumption as a commitment device against temptation.



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