User:Dr. Levon Barseghyan

I am Robert Julius Thorne Professor of Economics and the Director of Graduate Studies for the Field of Economics at Cornell University. I joined Cornell in 2003, after completing my PhD at Northwestern University. I also hold a Diploma in Mathematics from Yerevan State University, Armenia, an MS in Industrial Engineering from the American University of Armenia and an MS in Policy Economics from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

Though I have done research on a variety of topics, most of my papers fall into two categories. First, I have been studying risk preferences. I am interested in understanding how people perceive and evaluate risk. Three major questions addressed in my work are whether risk preferences are stable across contexts/markets, what is the behavioral nature of risk preferences, and what are the potential impacts of limited consideration on choice under risk.

Second, I have been working on the effects of institutions and policies on economic outcomes, leading to research questions at the intersection of growth, public finance and political economy. My earlier work focused on how government policies affect macroeconomic outcomes. Subsequently I have been working on understanding how institutions, and political economy constraints in general, influence the joint evolution of policies and economic outcomes.