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: Bertil Tungodden (Bergen)
This paper provides the first comprehensive global evidence on fairness and efficiency preferences, beliefs about inequality, and policy attitudes, based on data from over 65,000 individuals across 60 countries. It presents three sets of main findings. First, it offers novel insights on the fairness and efficiency preferences across the world, including causal evidence on how the source of inequality and the cost of redistribution affect inequality acceptance. Globally, we find that the source of inequality is far more important for inequality acceptance than the cost of redistribution. At the same time, significant heterogeneity in fairness views exists both within and between countries, with meritocracy being the dominant fairness view only in the Western world. Second, it provides a deeper understanding of the global patterns in people’s beliefs about the source of inequality and the cost of redistribution. In most countries, people believe that luck plays a more important role in shaping inequality than merit, while there is more disagreement about whether there is a cost of redistribution. Third, it establishes unique evidence on the importance of both preferences and beliefs for understanding policy attitudes on redistribution. People who are more accepting of inequality and those who believe in the importance of merit relative to luck as the source of inequality are less likely to view inequality in their own country as unfair. Finally, the paper provides compelling evidence that fairness considerations are crucial for explaining support for redistribution and cross-country variation in redistribution through taxes and transfers, while efficiency considerations play a less important role.