Ricardo Perez-Truglia

Associate Professor | Haas School of Business, University of California, Berkeley

Berkeley, CA, UNITED STATES

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Areas of Expertise (3)

Behavioral Economics

Political Economy

Public Economics

About

Ricardo Perez-Truglia is an Associate Professor at the Haas School of Business.

Ricardo teaches Microeconomics for MBAs. In 2022, he was awarded the Earl F. Cheit Award for Excellence in MBA Teaching.

Ricardo's research lies at the intersection of behavioral economics, political economy and public economics. Perez-Truglia intends his research to inform firms and policy makers in the developed and developing world, leading to practical applications.

One central theme in his research is how firms and individuals acquire and process information. Individuals hold many beliefs that are divorced from reality, even when it comes to basic concepts. They do not understand their own position in the income distribution, or the probability that they are audited by the IRS. In order to understand people's motivations, we need to know what people really believe. Perez-Truglia has applied this framework to topics such as inflation and home price expectations, tax compliance and preferences for redistribution.

In 2020, he was named a Sloan Research Fellow, an award that recognizes outstanding early-career faculty who have the potential to revolutionize their fields of study. Ricardo’s research has been published in premier academic journals and has been featured in media outlets such as the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, The Economist and National Public Radio.

Ricardo received his PhD in economics at Harvard University in 2014. Before joining Haas in 2020, he worked at UCLA-Anderson and Microsoft Research. Ricardo grew up in the Ciudadela neighborhood near Buenos Aires. Ricardo and his wife (Marina) have three children: Alma, Lucas and Nicolas.

Education (3)

Harvard University: PhD, Economics 2014

Universidad de San Andres: MA, Economics 2008

Universidad de San Andres: BA, Economics 2006

Links (2)

Honors & Awards (2)

Earl F. Cheit Award for Excellence in MBA Teaching

2022

Sloan Research Fellow

2020

Selected External Service & Affiliations (4)

2021-: Co-Editor, Journal of Public Economics.
2020–: Research Associate, National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER).
2019–: Research Director, Research Institute for Development, Growth and Economics (RIDGE)
2016–: Visiting Professor, Universidad de San Andres

Languages (1)

Spanish

Positions Held (1)

At Haas since 2020

July 2020 – Present: Associate Professor, Economic Analysis & Policy, Haas School of Business, UC Berkeley. July 2016 – June 2020: Assistant Professor, Global Economics and Management, Anderson School of Management, UCLA. July 2014 – June 2016: Post-Doctoral Researcher, Microsoft Research New England.

Media Appearances (15)

Here's what would happen if Americans could look up everyone's salary

MarketWatch online

2021-09-30

Employees might be more motivated if they find out what their manager earns. Research co-authored by Assoc. Prof. Ricardo Perez-Truglia found that workers at a large Southeast Asian bank sent more emails, sold more credit cards, and worked longer hours when they found out that their bosses made more money than they thought.

Can’t come to Berkeley? Haas launches new flex program to draw more students

Fortune online

2021-08-10

With the new online Flex MBA, some classes will be synchronous, but 40% to 60% of classes will pre-recorded—a method that Assoc. Prof. Ricardo Perez-Truglia found was helpful to his MBA students during the pandemic. “With the whole pandemic experience, one of the things that surprised me was students really, really like the asynchronous lectures I posted,” he said. “They watched them a lot, and I can see analytics, I can see exactly which videos they found the most useful.”

Study suggests male bankers benefit from smoking and drinking

eFinancialCareers online

2021-07-09

A new study co-authored by Assoc. Prof. Ricardo Perez-Truglia found male bankers who smoked with their managers were more likely to get promoted and a pay rise. "The promotion advantage that develops from social interactions may have the effect of helping men advance more quickly up the corporate ladder relative to women," he writes. The study looked at the careers of 14,736 employees at an Asian bank over a three-year period.

A Close-Up Picture of Partisan Segregation, Among 180 Million Voters

The New York Times online

2021-03-18

People are influenced by the political views of their peers. Research by Assoc. Prof. Ricardo Perez-Truglia found that people donated more in politically like-minded areas when he sent them a letter reminding them that their neighbors could look up their donations.

UCLA Anderson’s Perez-Truglia: The Old Boys’ Club Still Promotes Its Own

Poets & Quants online

2020-01-29

Perez-Truglia and Cullen start off by noting that among U.S. corporations, women make up nearly half of entry-level employees but their representation drops precipitately as they move up the ladder, comprising only 5% of all CEOs, according to McKinsey & Company. To see why this happens, they got access to the employment records of a giant Asian commercial bank, whose identity they kept anonymous, 65% of whose employees were female. At this bank, three out of every four entry-level employees were women but that percentage dropped sharply, to 25% at the C-Suite level and 0% at the very top of the pyramid—the CEO and the board.

Breaking the Salary Sharing Taboo

New York Times Magazine online

2020-02-19

About a decade ago, a naturally occurring social experiment took place in Norway that revealed how people react when they are given the opportunity to learn not just a co-worker’s income but the salary of every citizen in the country.

Friends with bonuses: men get ahead by befriending the boss

The Telegraph online

2020-02-18

That's right: male camaraderie really does lead to professional success, according to a new study by economists Zoe Cullen at Harvard and Ricardo Perez-Truglia at the University of California.

Study: How Schmoozing Helps Men Get Ahead

Harvard Business Review online

2020-01-29

Offices are social places. Employees and managers take coffee breaks together, go to lunch, hang out over drinks, and play in sports leagues. Companies often encourage this socializing, in hopes of fostering strong team bonds that lead to higher performance and less conflict.

A third of the gender pay gap can be explained by schmoozing between men and their male bosses

Quartz online

2019-12-19

The study, which has not yet been peer-reviewed, was posted as a working paper on the National Bureau of Economic Research. Its authors, Zoë Cullen of Harvard Business School and Ricardo Perez-Truglia at the University of California, Los Angeles, set out to answer the question of how the gender of someone’s boss may affect the employee’s career trajectory.

Hundreds of journalists anonymously reveal their salaries on viral spreadsheet, challenging workplace taboo

Washington Post online

2019-11-14

It was once called “the last taboo.” But a spreadsheet circulating this week with the salary information for workers in one industry — news media — has shown how the issue of pay equity has moved into the center of the national discussion about work and fairness.

Should you decide what you are paid?

Financial Times online

2018-11-28

The latest research suggests not all those concerns are justified. Zoe Cullen of Harvard Business School and Ricardo Perez-Truglia at UCLA’s Anderson School of Management looked at more than 2,000 workers at a large commercial bank.

Happy ‘National Jealousy Day’! Finland Bares Its Citizens’ Taxes

New York Times online

2018-11-01

Shortly after 6 a.m. on Thursday, people began lining up outside the central office of the Finnish tax administration. It was chilly and dark, but they claimed their places, eager to be the first to tap into a mother lode of data.

The Motivating (and Demotivating) Effects of Learning Others’ Salaries

Harvard Business Review online

2018-10-25

Pay inequality is common in most workplaces. You get paid significantly more than your subordinates, your boss gets paid more than you, and your boss’s boss gets even more. In many large organizations, some employees can take home paychecks tens or hundreds of times more than others.

My Boss Makes What?!

Wall Street journal online

2018-08-06

It turns out that bosses who are transparent about their salaries may end up fostering higher workplace morale than those who aren’t.

Shaming Those Who Skip Out on Taxes