Why are women more likely to wear a face mask than men? Understanding individuals’ behaviour is crucial.
Our experimental and behavioural research has provided insights into how individuals and families behaved when faced with the lockdowns and economic dislocation induced by COVID-19. But the work of our researchers extends well beyond the COVID-19 pandemic.
Using lab and field experiments we address major economic and societal issues, such as trust and leadership, asset market bubbles, wage determining institutions, honesty, migration and finance. Through our Sustainable Development Cluster researchers also contribute their expertise to the core concerns of climate change, inequality and wellbeing.
Our researchers come from a wide range of academic backgrounds, including economics, physics, and mathematics, and work in a multidisciplinary manner with researchers from psychology, business and management and sociology. Successful collaborations with academics from the UK and wider international communities have resulted in multiple funded applied research projects and publications in highly ranked academic journals.
The group is not only involved in ground-breaking research, it also contributes to the formation of future behavioural economists through the Masters in Behavioral Economics in Action.
If you are interested in the work of the Experimental and Behavioural Economics research group and/or would like to attend one of our research seminars, please find us on Twitter @mdx_becor email Professor Praveen Kujal
This experimental research led by Dr Ericka Rascon Ramirez evaluated interventions designed to reduce gender-biased social norms against schooling, and improve learning educational outcomes of 6-9 year-old children living in North West Nigeria. The first intervention was a social norms campaign that consisted of community screenings, the provision of information about the benefits of education, and post-screening discussions structured around the aspirational and social norms messages of the edu-tainment screenings. The second intervention was a mobile-based edu-tainment intervention that consisted of educational games and digital books designed for early grade reading. The research comprised a clustered-randomised control trial involving 9000 families living in 128 school catchment areas and is funded by the World Bank (DIME), the Nigerian Government and the Norwegian Fund NORAD.
https://sites.google.com/view/movies-and-mobile-nigeria
Led by Dr Tanya O’Garra, this international project evaluated the impact of community-based adaptive management on social and ecological outcomes of coastal communities in Fiji. Using a quasi-experimental approach, the project was a response to a call for “lessons learned” from the Locally Managed Marine Area (LMMA) network - one of the most extensive networks of co-management sites in the world, comprising stakeholders from NGOs, universities, national governments, regional organisations and local communities. Funded by the British Academy, the project developed a Decision Support Tool targeted at local NGOs working with local communities, and a Data Collection Template for implementation throughout the rest of the LMMA network in the South Pacific, Asia and Africa. These outputs will support coastal communities as they seek to deal with the increasing impacts of climate change, including sea level rise, fisheries decline and increasingly extreme climatic shocks.
