I am a Postdoctoral Research Associate at Princeton (Research Program in Development Economics, RPDE).
In my research, I examine how individuals’ and firms’ decisions affect labor market inequality and political polarization.
I received my PhD in Economics from Stanford in 2026. I will join LMU Munich as an Assistant Professor in 2027.
My research is funded by the National Science Foundation, J-PAL, and the Weiss Fund. Prior to Princeton, I was a lead research analyst at the World Bank and a research fellow at the NBER and MIT Blueprint Labs.
My CV is available here.
Get in touch: ablatt@stanford.edu
Job Market Paper
Breaking the Bubble - The Determinants and Effects of Cross-partisan Contact
with Vlasta Rasocha
Should policymakers intervene to reduce social segregation? The answer depends on the effect of increased contact among those who would not seek it out on their own. We conduct a field experiment in the context of political segregation in Brazil to measure the joint distribution of aversion to cross-partisan interactions and the treatment effects of actual interactions on outgroup hostility. To do so, we randomize participants into interactions providing strong financial compensation for compliance. We find evidence of a segregation trap: the most hostile partisans avoid interactions because they incorrectly believe they will be unpleasant and unproductive. Actual interactions correct these beliefs and lead to large, long-lasting reductions in hostility. Importantly, these effects are largest among partisans with high levels of baseline hostility and aversion to outgroup interactions, and lead to an increase in demand for future interactions. In a cost-benefit analysis, we find that current policy interventions targeting volunteer participants are outperformed by incentive-based interventions at any level of budget. Finally, we show that a lower-cost intervention that substitutes a video for actual interactions can produce similarly beneficial effects.
Media: Carta Capital, Estadão, Folha de S. Paulo, Gazeta do Povo, Jota, Terra, Veja
Funders: National Science Foundation, Weiss Fund, J-PAL Governance Initiative, J-PAL Crime and Violence Initiative, J-PAL Jobs and Opportunity Initiative, Stanford King Center, CEGA Berkeley, Institute for Humane Studies, Stanford SIEPR, Stanford IRiSS, Stanford GRO, Stanford CLAS, Stanford PACS
Implementation partners: My Country Talks, Instituto Sivis, RenovaBR, More in Common