Illustrated portrait of Jesper Armouti-Hansen

Quantitative Scientist

Jesper Armouti-Hansen

Economics PhD applying statistical modelling, econometrics, and machine learning evaluation to structured data.

I am a quantitative scientist with a background in economics and a PhD from the University of Cologne. In my current role, I work with machine learning models in an operational context, focusing on how model outputs can be used reliably in practice — understanding confidence levels, defining thresholds, and supporting decisions on when results can be used directly and when human review is required.

My academic research covers theoretical and empirical topics in microeconomics, with a focus on behavioral economics, personnel economics, organizational economics, formal modelling, and careful interpretation of results.

Selected work

Projects

GitHub social preview for the RAG Search Engine repository

GitHub project · AI search and retrieval

RAG Search Engine

CLI-based RAG search engine for movie data combining BM25, semantic and hybrid search, multimodal CLIP search, Gemini query enhancement, reranking, and generation.

Python · RAG · BM25 · semantic search · CLIP · reranking

GitHub social preview for the Economic Theories and Machine Learning repository

GitHub project · Research code

Economic Theories and Machine Learning

Analysis code connected to research on evaluating economic theories using machine learning techniques.

Python · machine learning · economic theory · model evaluation

GitHub social preview for the CitiBike Data Science repository

Case study · Applied data science

CitiBike Demand, Risk, and Net Flow Analysis

Demand, risk, and net-flow analysis of CitiBike NYC from 2023 to 2025, using trip and collision data to examine usage patterns, station-level risk, and operational dynamics.

data science · data cleaning · feature engineering · machine learning

GitHub social preview for the Efficiency Wages repository

GitHub project · Research code

Efficiency Wages with Motivated Agents

Replication data and code for the paper Efficiency Wages with Motivated Agents and its online appendix.

Python · Stata · experimental economics · replication · Jupyter Notebook

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Research

Selected publications

2024 · Publication

Efficiency Wages with Motivated Agents

Jesper Armouti-Hansen, Lea Cassar, Anna Dereky, and Florian Engl

Games and Economic Behavior, 145, pp. 66-83

Abstract

Many jobs serve a social purpose beyond profit maximization. This paper uses a modified principal-agent gift-exchange game with positive externality to study how workers' prosocial motivation interacts with efficiency wages in stimulating effort. The results show that prosocial motivation and efficiency wages are independent in stimulating effort, while principals offer higher wages in the prosocial treatment because they underestimate reciprocity in the standard gift-exchange environment.

2024 · Publication

Managing Anticipation and Reference-Dependent Choice

Jesper Armouti-Hansen and Christopher Kops

Journal of Mathematical Economics, 112, 102988

Abstract

The paper develops a model of reference-dependent choice in which the reference point may be any convex combination of possible outcomes under a consumption lottery. It introduces solution concepts, characterizes them on choice data, and identifies the model's parameters.

2020 · Publication

Optimal Contracting with Endogenous Project Mission

Jesper Armouti-Hansen and Lea Cassar

Journal of the European Economic Association, 18(5), pp. 2647-2676

Abstract

The paper studies how organizations can choose a project mission to attract, incentivize, and screen workers. It analyzes how contractual environments shape the optimal distance between the organization's preferred mission and the agents' preferred mission.

All publications →

Research interests

Behavioral and organizational economics

My academic work studies incentives, motivation, social preferences, reference-dependent choice, and organizational design. Current projects evaluate the predictive completeness of social preference theories using machine learning benchmarks, and study frequency-report scoring rules for belief elicitation — asking what can be inferred from discrete reports under different scoring-rule designs.

Teaching

Courses and supervision

Supervised more than 60 bachelor and master theses.

Contact

Get in touch

For professional, research, or project-related inquiries, the easiest way to reach me is by email.