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: Georgios Gerasimou (Glasgow)
Learning to maximize (expected) utility (with Thomas Dohmen (Bonn)).
We ask if humans behave more consistently with theories of rational choice when they face the same decision problems repeatedly, without receiving any feedback. We designed an experiment where 15 menus of various sizes, drawn from a set of 7 lotteries with 3 monetary outcomes each, were presented 5 times in a structured semi-random order. We conducted this experiment in laboratories in the UK and in Germany. Significantly more subjects behaved like utility and expected-utility maximisers in the last 15 than in the first 15 identical decision problems. Taking the utility-maximising preferences revealed in those subjects' last 15 choices as their “true preferences”, we find that the probability of choosing their preferred lottery at a menu earlier in the experiment is significantly increasing in their prior exposure to that lottery. We discuss implications that such introspective learning and its “more exposure” driver have for preference elicitation.