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 - Eugenio Proto (Glasgow)
Using novel data from Luxembourg and comparative evidence from the UK and Australia, we document systematic under-reporting of children's socio-emotional difficulties by parents - particularly for daughters. A distinctive feature of our study is the joint measurement of first-order beliefs (how parents think their child feels) and second-order beliefs (how parents think their child reports feeling), allowing us to disentangle information frictions from evaluative bias. We find that second-order beliefs are systematically biased and that their precision is negatively correlated with the level of distress reported by the child. Parents with more accurate second-order beliefs also provide closer and unbiased first-order asvmaiments, suggesting that the negative difference between parent and child reports may arise from information frictions rather than deliberate minimization. Misperceptions are more common among highly educated and employed parents, and in parent-child pairs with divergent personality traits. Interestingly, parents with more accurate priors about general parental under-reporting tend to show greater divergence from their child's report in their rust-order beliefs. An information treatment improves beliefs among parents who already hold priors about systematic discrepancies between parent and child reports, demonstrating the malleability of parental beliefs to light-touch interventions. We also provide exploratory evidence that receiving accurate information can influence parents intentions to invest in their children's human capital.