Episodes
3 days ago
3 days ago
In this episode, we talk with Ran Spiegler about his book "The Curious Culture of Economic Theory". The book is a collection of essays about how the professional culture of economics shapes the way theory is done. Our interview focuses on Chapter 8, in which Ran describes the story behind his American Economic Review paper "Search Design and Broad Matching" co-authored with Kfir Eliaz. In this project, Ran and Kfir attempted to study a problem using an established but "unfashionable" modeling approach. Despite getting interesting results, they later rewrote the paper using the standard approach in the literature. Among other things, we discuss why they felt they had to do this and how the new design nudged them into asking certain questions they were originally not interested in.
Sunday Dec 03, 2023
Team incentives and escape rooms with Simeon Schudy
Sunday Dec 03, 2023
Sunday Dec 03, 2023
In this episode, we talk with Simeon Schudy about his working paper "The Effect of Incentives in Non-Routine Analytical Team Tasks", co-authored with Florian Englmaier, Stefan Grimm, Dominik Grothe and David Schindler (forthcoming in the Journal of Political Economy). Using a novel experimental setup, escape rooms, this paper investigates the effect of incentives on performance in non-routine analytical team tasks. The paper studies the value of incentives for both intrinsically and less intrinsically motivated teams. Further, it evaluates how incentives affect team organization and studies the impact of exogenously varying the demand for leadership in such tasks.
The following reference was also mentioned during the conversation:
Englmaier, F., Grimm, S., Grothe, D., Schindler, D., and Schudy, S. (2021): "The Efficacy of Tournaments for Non-Routine Team Tasks", forthcoming in the Journal of Labor Economics.
Wednesday Mar 08, 2023
Enabling or Limiting Cognitive Flexibility with Marta Serra-Garcia
Wednesday Mar 08, 2023
Wednesday Mar 08, 2023
In this episode, we talk with Marta Serra-Garcia Marta Serra-Garcia about her American Economic Review paper "Enabling or Limiting Cognitive Flexibility? Evidence of Demand for Moral Commitment," co-authored with Silvia Saccardo. This paper investigates the nature and flexibility of self-serving beliefs in decision environments where morals and personal incentives are in conflict. Through laboratory experiments, the authors distinguish participants who are willing to curb opportunities for self-serving beliefs, favouring moral behaviour, from those who seek the cognitive flexibility to entertain beliefs that can justify their selfish decisions.
Sunday Dec 04, 2022
Cash Transfers & Psychotherapy with Johannes Haushofer
Sunday Dec 04, 2022
Sunday Dec 04, 2022
In this episode, we talk with Johannes Haushofer about his paper “The Comparative Impact of Cash Transfers and a Psychotherapy Program on Psychological and Economic Well-being” co-authored with Robert Mudida and Jeremy Shapiro. This paper explores the possible interactive or synergetic effects between cash transfers and a psychotherapy intervention in Kenya. We discuss the surprising results of this study, some of the biggest challenges and ethical considerations such as the collection of sensitive data and randomisation of cash transfers itself.
Friday Jul 08, 2022
Social Learning with Ben Golub
Friday Jul 08, 2022
Friday Jul 08, 2022
In this episode, we talk with Ben Golub about his paper “Signaling, Shame, and Silence in Social Learning” co-authored with Arun Chandrasekhar and He Yang. This paper studies how signaling, and shame-related concerns can reduce social learning. Throughout the conversation, Ben also shares helpful pieces of advice for young researchers ranging from working on multiple projects to writing better.
Friday Apr 01, 2022
Obviously Strategy-Proof Mechanisms with Shengwu Li
Friday Apr 01, 2022
Friday Apr 01, 2022
In this episode we talk with Shengwu Li about his paper Obviously Strategy-Proof Mechanisms . In this paper Shengwu introduces the notion of an "obviously dominant strategies", which describes a strategy that is not only dominant but can also recognised as weakly dominant by an agent with cognitive limitations.
Monday Mar 07, 2022
Self Persuasion with Peter Schwardmann and Egon Tripodi
Monday Mar 07, 2022
Monday Mar 07, 2022
In this episode we talk with Peter Schwardmann and Egon Tripodi about their paper Self-Persuasion: Evidence from Field Experiments at International Debating Competitions. In this paper Peter and Egon study if people are more likely to believe in the veracity of a claim if it is convenient for them to do so.
Monday Feb 07, 2022
Economic Behaviour and Genetic Makeup with Pietro Biroli
Monday Feb 07, 2022
Monday Feb 07, 2022
In this episode, we talk to Pietro Biroli from the University of Bologna about his paper ”Moral Hazard Heterogeneity: Genes and Health Insurance Influence Smoking after a Health Shock”. In this paper, Pietro and his co-author Laura Zwyssig show that individual behaviour is influenced not only by environmental constraints but also by genetic makeup, which carries implications for the fairness and effectiveness of health policies.
Monday Jan 10, 2022
How to Change with Katy Milkman
Monday Jan 10, 2022
Monday Jan 10, 2022
In this episode, we talk to Katy Milkman from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania about some of the research that led to the production of her recent book, How to Change. Throughout this conversation, Katy shares with us what she has learned from her many years of experience as a behavioural science researcher and where she might go next to tackle the challenge that preoccupies her the most: changing behaviour for good.
Tuesday Dec 14, 2021
Lapse-Based Insurance with Daniel Gottlieb
Tuesday Dec 14, 2021
Tuesday Dec 14, 2021
In this episode we talk to Daniel Gottlieb from LSE about his paper Lapse-Based Insurance . In this paper Daniel studies why customers lapse on their life insurance payments and how this is related to insurance pricing using both a theoretical model and a survey data.