I am Assistant Professor (with tenure) at the School of Economics, University College Dublin and Research Fellow at the Geary Institute for Public Policy. I hold a PhD in Economics from Lund University.
My research is in behavioural economics, where I use theoretical, empirical and (primarily) experimental methods to study individual decision-making. In particular, I focus on how social image, norms, and beliefs shape behaviour in labour markets and institutional settings.
Contact: margaret.samahita@ucd.ie
CV: [pdf]
Strategic confidence? The gender confidence gap and anticipated discrimination in economics peer-review (with Martina Zanella) Reject and Resubmit at Journal of Human Resources
Religious behaviour, labour supply, and social conformity: Evidence from a workplace ban on Muslim religious veiling (with Kevin Devereux and Blair Long)
Paying more or hassling less? Experimental evidence on administrative burdens, incentives, and grant take-up (with Leonhard K. Lades and Glenn McNamara)
The benefit of collective intelligence in community-based content moderation is limited by overt political signalling (with Gabriela Juncosa, Saeedeh Mohammadi and Taha Yasseri)
Funhouse reflections: Social media perceptions and charitable donations (with Pierluigi Conzo, Andrea Gallice and Juan S. Morales)
Manager gender and employee preferences: Evidence from a survey experiment (with Petru Calenici and Demid Getik)
Ambiguity and the variance of gambles: An experiment (with Yung-Shiang Jasmine Yang and Karl Whelan)
Luxury beliefs and welfare loss: Ignorance, horizontal or vertical signalling? (with Demid Getik)
Conformity and silence: Experimental evidence on social pressure and free speech (with
Juan S. Morales)
Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, 2026, 249: 107725
“Luxury beliefs”: Signaling through ideology?
Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics, 2026, 121: 102538
Anchoring and subjective belief distributions (with
Hakan J. Holm,
Erik Wengström &
Roel van Veldhuizen)
Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, 2025, 240: 107304
Unraveling gender norms: Social and personal norms in the preferential promotion of women (with
Manuel E. Lago &
Orla Doyle)
Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics, 2025, 115: 102336
The inelastic demand for affirmative action (with
Demid Getik &
Marco Islam)
European Economic Review, 2024, 170: 104862
Are economics conferences gender-neutral? Evidence from Ireland (with
Kevin Devereux)
Oxford Bulletin of Economics and Statistics, 2024, 86(1): 101–118
[podcast]
Gender, productivity, and promotion in the Irish economics profession (with
Kevin Devereux)
Economics Bulletin, 2023, 43(3): 1225–1234
[podcast]
No mood effects in the field: The case of car inspections (with
Hakan J. Holm)
Journal of Economic Psychology, 2023, 96: 102612
Too much commitment? An online experiment with tempting YouTube content (with
Claes Ek)
Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, 2023, 208: 21–38 [online appendices]
Pay-what-you-want in competition
The B.E. Journal of Theoretical Economics, 2020, 20(1): 20180063 [pdf]
Curating social image: Experimental evidence on the value of actions and selfies (with
Hakan J. Holm)
Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, 2018, 148: 83–104
[radio]
Venting and gossiping in conflicts: Verbal expression in ultimatum games
Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics, 2017, 67: 111–121
Pay-what-you-want pricing schemes: A self-image perspective (with
Goytom Abraha Kahsay)
Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Finance, 2015, 7: 17–28
Effect of effort on self-image: Monotonically increasing self-image functions
Economics Bulletin, 2013, 33(1): 152–157
Vulnerability to and acceptability of different types of sludge (with
Leonhard K. Lades,
Lucie Martin,
Cass R. Sunstein &
Martin Baekgaard)
Behavioural Public Policy, 2025, 1–30
Compliance spending aversion: An unintended consequence of charity regulation (with
Leonhard K. Lades)
Journal of Behavioral Public Administration, 2023, 6(1): 1–30
Can ♥s change minds? Social media endorsements and policy preferences (with
Pierluigi Conzo,
Laura K. Taylor,
Juan S. Morales &
Andrea Gallice)
Social Media + Society, 2023, 9(2)
[the conversation]
Erratum: Figure 5 right panel should be this
What drives home solar PV uptake? Subsidies, peer effects and visibility in Sweden (with
Luis Mundaca)
Energy Research & Social Science, 2020, 60: 101319
Behavioural economics for energy and climate change policies and the transition to a sustainable energy use: A Scandinavian perspective (with
Luis Mundaca, Jonas Sonnenschein & Roman Seidl)
In M. Lopes, C. Henggeler Antunes & K. B. Janda (Eds.), Energy and Behavior: Towards a Low Carbon Future, 2020, pp. 45–87, London: Academic Press
The sources of researcher variation in economics (with Nick Huntington-Klein, Claus C. Portner, Ian McCarthy & the Many Economists Collaborative on Researcher Variation)
Journal of Economic Literature, 2026, accepted
Investigating the analytical robustness of the social and behavioural sciences (with Balazs Aczel, Barnabas Szaszi, Harry T. Clelland, Marton Kovács, Felix Holzmeister, Don van Ravenzwaaij, Hannah Schulz-Kümpel, Sabine Hoffmann, Gustav Nilsonne, Livia Kosa, Zoltan A. Torma, the Multi100 Collaboration & Brian A. Nosek)
Nature, 2026, 652: 135–142
Reproducibility in Management Science (with Miloš Fišar, Ben Greiner, Christoph Huber, Elena Katok, Ali I. Ozkes & the Management Science Reproducibility Collaboration)
Management Science, 2024, 70(3): 1343–1356
On the trajectory of discrimination: A meta-analysis and forecasting survey capturing 44 years of field experiments on gender and hiring decisions (with Michael Schaerer, Christilene du Plessis, My Hoang Bao Nguyen, Robbie C. M. van Aert, Leo Tiokhin, Daniël Lakens, Elena Giulia Clemente, Thomas Pfeiffer, Anna Dreber, Magnus Johannesson, Cory J. Clark, the Gender Audits Forecasting Collaboration & Eric Luis Uhlmann)
Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 2023, 179: 104280
Creative destruction in science (with Warren Tierney, Jay H. Hardy III, Charles R. Ebersole, Keith Leavitt, Domenico Viganola, Elena Giulia Clemente, Michael Gordon, Anna Dreber, Magnus Johannesson, Thomas Pfeiffer, the Hiring Decisions Forecasting Collaboration & Eric Luis Uhlmann)
Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 2020, 161: 291–309
Luxury beliefs, distributional fairness and public policy in Ireland (with Ciara O’Donnell)
PublicPolicy.ie Policy Paper, 2026
Assessing administrative burdens as barriers to implementation of Ireland’s Climate Action Plan (with Cara Augustenborg, Patricia Lentz,
Leonhard K. Lades &
Lucie Martin)
Environmental Protection Agency Research Report 513, 2026
Reducing friction, promoting fairness: Behavioural perspectives on sludge in Irish public services (with
Leonhard K. Lades)
PublicPolicy.ie Policy Paper, 2026
Advanced Microeconomics - MSc Economics
Decision Theory - MSc Economics
Economics of Gender - BSc Economics