Thomas W. Graeber

Thomas Graeber is an Assistant Professor of Business Administration in the Negotiation, Organizations & Markets Unit at Harvard Business School. He teaches Negotiations in the MBA elective curriculum.

As an empirical behavioral and experimental economist, Professor Graeber’s research focuses on identifying the determinants and economic implications of bounded rationality and non-standard preferences as sources of deviations from canonical economic models. His main research efforts revolve around developing an improved empirical understanding of how complexity affects belief formation and choice given constrained cognitive resources, such as limited attention. Professor Graeber’s research utilizes laboratory and large-scale internet experiments, representative surveys, and field data.

Professor Graeber earned his Ph.D. in Economics from University of Bonn, Germany. He holds a B.A. in Economics from the University of Cambridge. Prior to joining HBS, Professor Graeber was a Post-Doctoral Fellow at Harvard University, Department of Economics.

Journal Articles

• Graeber, Thomas. "Inattentive Inference." Journal of the European Economic Association (forthcoming): 1–33. View Details
• Fetzer, Thiemo, and Thomas Graeber. "Measuring the Scientific Effectiveness of Contact Tracing: Evidence from a Natural Experiment." Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 118, no. 33 (August 17, 2021): 1–4. View Details
• Xiang, Yang, Thomas Graeber, Benjamin Enke, and Samuel Gershman. "Bayesian Signatures of Confidence and Central Tendency in Perceptual Judgment." Attention, Perception, & Psychophysics (March 2021): 1–11. View Details
• Falk, Armin, and Thomas Graeber. "Delayed Negative Effects of Prosocial Spending on Happiness." Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 117, no. 12 (March 24, 2020): 6463–6468. View Details

Working Papers

• Enke, Benjamin, Thomas Graeber, and Ryan Oprea. "Complexity and Time." NBER Working Paper Series, No. 31047, March 2023. View Details
• Graeber, Thomas, Christopher Roth, and Florian Zimmermann. "Stories, Statistics and Memory." Working Paper, December 2022. View Details
• Enke, Benjamin, Thomas Graeber, and Ryan Oprea. "Confidence, Self-Selection and Bias in the Aggregate." NBER Working Paper Series, No. 30262, July 2022. View Details
• Enke, Benjamin, and Thomas Graeber. "Cognitive Uncertainty in Intertemporal Choice." NBER Working Paper Series, No. 29577, December 2021. (R&R at The Quarterly Journal of Economics.) View Details
• Campos-Mercade, Pol, Lorenz Goette, Thomas Graeber, Alex Kellogg, and Charles Sprenger. "Heterogeneity of Gain-Loss Attitudes and Expectations-Based Reference Points." Working Paper, August 2022. View Details
• Chopra, Felix, Armin Falk, and Thomas Graeber. "Intertemporal Altruism." Working Paper, August 2022. (R&R at American Economic Journal Microeconomics.) View Details

Additional Information

• Personal Website