DR@W
DR@W
Decision Research at Warwick (DR@W) is an interdisciplinary initiative which focuses on behavioural and experimental research of decision making.
Formed in January 2010, DR@W brings together researchers and students from Economics, Psychology, Statistics, Warwick Mathematics Institute, Warwick Manufacturing Group and Warwick Business School that are interested in current developments in the area of experimental and behavioural research.
The Department of Economics have created and manage a large computer laboratory for use with experiments.
Visit the Decision Research at Warwick website for further details.
DR@W Forum: Tingyan Jia (University of Leicester)
Through theoretical and experimental analysis, this study explores the role of empathy in economics and its implications for redistribution. Empathy is defined as accurately simulating others’ feelings, distinct from altruism. Self-interested wealthy individuals may choose not to be empathetic towards the poor to justify limited re-distribution. However, diverse personal experiences counteract this self-serving motivated reasoning, promoting greater empathy and redistribution. I formalize the mechanism with a model and conduct a laboratory experiment with exogenous variations in experience and information to validate the model’s predictions. Empirical results affirm the motivated reduction of empathy and underscore the mitigating effect of experience.