I combine microeconomic modeling, statistical analysis of observational data, and field and lab experiments. Lately, much of my research is about research itself: how it gets evaluated, how evaluations can be made more useful to decision-makers, and what AI models can and can’t do here. The full list is in my CV and on Google Scholar.
Recent work
- “Just Ask the Model: One-Shot LLM Research Evaluation and Structured Expert Review” (with Valentin Klotzbücher, Lorenzo Pacchiardi and Tianmai Michael Zhang). Working paper, 2026. Compares frontier-LLM ratings and critiques of research with The Unjournal’s expert evaluations. Project workspace, code.
- Sleegers, Moss, McAuliffe, Reinstein and Waldhorn, “Measuring Wild Animal Welfare Attitudes: The Attitudes Towards Wild Animal Welfare Scale.” Psychology of Human-Animal Intergroup Relations 4, 2025.
- Kretschmer, Smeets and Reinstein, “When Does Charity Effectiveness Matter to Donors? The Role of Ratings and Expectations about Cost-Effectiveness.” Working paper, 2025.
- Caro, Labovich, Okechi, Reinstein and Rodrigues, “A Comment on ‘The Political Consequences of Green Policies: Evidence from Italy’.” I4R Discussion Paper 168, 2024. A reproduction and robustness check.
- I was also one of many co-authors on Brodeur et al., “AI-assisted teams outperform AI-led teams but not human-only teams in assessing research reproducibility in quantitative social science” (PNAS, 2026), a large team study I took part in through The Unjournal.
- As an Unjournal evaluation manager, I’ve written or co-written 50+ evaluation summaries, which pull together the expert evaluations of each paper.
Focus areas
Research evaluation and open science. Through The Unjournal, building and studying public, journal-independent evaluation of research, with quantitative ratings and stated uncertainty.
Charitable giving and other-regarding behavior. What motivates giving, and especially whether information about effectiveness changes what people give (see this synthesis and the past EA Market Testing work).
Applied microeconomics and methods. Social, psychological and institutional influences on choices; field experiments; Bayesian approaches, meta-analysis and Monte Carlo policy simulations.
Selected publications
- “Empathic and Numerate Giving: The Joint Effects of Victim Images and Charity Evaluations” (with Robin Bergh). Social Psychological and Personality Science 12(3): 407–416, 2021. Preprint
- “Losing Face” (with Thomas Gall). Oxford Economic Papers 72(1): 164–190, 2020. PDF
- “Ex-ante Commitments to ‘Give if you Win’ Exceed Donations After a Win” (with Christian Kellner and Gerhard Riener). Journal of Public Economics 169: 109–127, 2019. PDF
- “Anonymous Rituals” (with David Hugh-Jones). Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization 81: 478, 2012. Link
- “Decomposing Desert and Tangibility Effects in a Charitable Giving Experiment” (with Gerhard Riener). Experimental Economics, 2012.
- “Efficient Consumer Altruism and Fair Trade Products” (with Joon Song). Journal of Economics and Management Strategy 21(1), 2012.
- “Does One Contribution Come at the Expense of Another? Empirical Evidence on Substitution Among Charitable Donations.” The B.E. Journal of Economic Analysis & Policy 11(1), 2011.
- “The Influence of Expert Reviews on Consumer Demand for Experience Goods: A Case Study of Movie Critics” (with C. M. Snyder). Journal of Industrial Economics 53(1): 27–51, 2005.
Open, ongoing projects
- Increasing effective charitable giving: the puzzle, what we know, what we need to know next (with Nick Fitz, Ari Kagan, Janek Kretschmer and Luke Arundel)
- Impact of impact information on giving: field experiments and synthesis
- EA Market Testing data analysis
- Working papers and other projects are listed in the CV.