Experimental and Behavioural Economics
Experimental and Behavioural Economics
The Experimental and Behavioural Economics Research Group (EBERG) draws its membership from economists based at the Economics Department at Warwick who work in the fields of Experimental Economics, Behavioural Economics and/or Subjective Wellbeing (“Happiness Economics”). Experimental methods are used in many fields of economics, including behavioural economics, public economics, labour economics, political economy, game theory, and financial economics. Behavioural economics is an attempt to understand decision-making in the context of the many psychological, cognitive and emotional factors that influence behaviour. Behavioural economists typically build on traditional economic models with insights from psychology or neuroscience. Since behavioural economics concerns the underlying motivations for behaviour it can be hard (though not impossible) to find data to support or develop behavioural theories without the use of experimental methods which explains the close relationship between the two fields.
Experimental and behavioural research are fundamentally interdisciplinary and this is reflected in the fact that the group is linked to other similar groups across the University of Warwick and beyond. DR@W is the overarching interdisciplinary group of all behavioural scientists in Warwick which, together with EBERG, also takes members from the Behavioural Science Group at Warwick Business School and behavioural and experimental psychologists based in the Psychology Department, and hosts a weekly seminar, the DR@W Forum. Many members of EBERG are also affiliated with Bridges, an interdisciplinary centre that includes behavioural and experimental work in its remit that also hosts regular seminars and workshops. Behaviour, Brain and Society is one of the University of Warwick’s global research priorities (GRPs) and the co-ordinator of EBERG sits on the board of the GRP. Several group members are actively involved in the ESRC CAGE centre. Theme 3 of CAGE is led by the co-ordinator of EBERG and has a special focus on subjective wellbeing.
People
Academics
Academics associated with the Reseach Group Name research group are:
Events
DR@W Forum: Matthew Cashman (WBS. Behavioural Science Group)
Cultural evolution is changing humanity much faster than genetic evolution, but at present we lack a way to empirically ground models in a quantitative, content-agnostic way analogous to counting alleles in models of genetic evolution. Measuring what information ends up in which minds is a necessary first step to explaining how that information got there. A quantitative view of what information ends up in which minds permits modeling of the many different processes that govern its flow, from informational legacies left to descendants to sharing on social media. To address this gap, we take Shannon’s classic cloze-completion game for estimating the entropy of written language and turn it on its head: instead of using minds to learn about written language, we use language to learn about minds. Entropy estimates generated based on a test set from e.g. Harry Potter will differ between a treatment group (Readers, people who have read Harry Potter), and a control group (Non-Readers). This difference is driven by the way their minds have been changed by reading the book. It is an expression, in bits, of how much information from the book is actually stored in Readers' minds and capable of influencing behavior.