Our affiliate Marcus Giamattei is appointed as Professor for Macroeconomics at the Bard College Berlin. Before joining the Bard College Berlin, Marcus was assistant professor at the University of Passau. He is affiliated with CeDEx at the University of Nottingham, UK, and has been a visiting researcher at Universitat Pompeu Fabra in Barcelona. Marcus developed ClassEx, a tool for interactive classroom and lab-in-the-field experiments with mobile devices and LIONESS Lab, a platform for online experiments. Those platforms enable instructors and researchers to use experiments outside of the conventional laboratory environment. ClassEx and LIONESS are used in over 50 countries around the world.

يسعدنا أن نتقدّم إليكم بأحر التهاني وأطيب الأماني بمناسبة حلول عيد الأضحى المبارك. وكل عام وأنتم وأحبتكم بخير وسعادة.

We are very pleased to extend to you our warmest congratulations and best wishes on the occasion of Eid Al-Adha. May you celebrate it every year with your loved ones being well and happy.

Image kindly provided by https://www.vectorstock.com/royalty-free-vector/kaaba-holy-symbolic-building-in-islam-vector-13906219

Are you currently pursuing a PhD or Master in Behavioral Economics and are you interested in applying behavioral insights in the field? Then get in touch with us: we are currently looking for behavioral freelancers and are always interested in new research collaborations.

Big day for BEHAVIA: We have teamed up with the Asbar Center for Studies, Research & Communications to cooperate on a behavioral economics project  in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. Working hand in hand to deliver the best results for our client, we are very excited to jointly provide unique Saudi experience in public policy paired with Behavioral Economic Engineering made in Germany.

Some impressions taken during the official launch event…

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16th place among the best young universities worldwide and 2nd place in Germany

BEHAVIA‘s  academic incubator and alma mater Passau University has secured another top result in the latest Times Higher Education (THE) Ranking for 2019. Among the universities aged 50 or younger (‘Young University Ranking’) Passau came in 16th and in second place in Germany.

Find more information in the official press release.

For the 17^th time, our affiliate Prof. Dr. Johann Graf Lambsdorff and his team are organizing the workshop “The Economics of Corruption”, at the University of Passau. This year’s workshop focusses on “Overcoming Behavioral Impediments to Honesty” and will be held from September 22-29, 2019.

The workshop provides graduate and PhD-students with experimental, behavioral and institutional tools for doing research on corruption and good governance. For further information and registration, please approach http://www.icgg.org.

Further reading on behavioral approaches to increase honesty and integrity:

1. How income and tax rates provoke cheating – An experimental investigation of tax morale
2. Preventing Corruption by Promoting Trust – Insights from Behavioral Science

Our Managing Director, Dr. Manuel Schubert, will give a talk on Behavioral Labor Market Insights at Passau University on 17/06/2019. During his presentation, Manuel will propose concepts on how to measure the root causes behind the employer-employee mismatch, on how to identify the drivers of employability and entrepreneurship and discuss actionable, small-scale interventions to cope with behavioral barriers in the labor market. Read More

Our directors Manuel and Julia just came back from a fantastic visit to Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, giving a Masterclass in Behavioral Public Policy. This week, Manuel is catching up on “Behavioral Economics and the Seven Deadly Sins”. More to come in June, then focusing on moral decay, procrastination and behavioral labor market insights.

Our Managing Director, Dr. Manuel Schubert, gave a talk on Behavioral Public Policy at the Asbar World Forum in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. With a couple of interactive live-experiments, the event also premiered ClassEx in the Gulf region. Great night with great people and very inspiring discussions!

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‘The very essence of romance is uncertainty.’ Oscar Wilde, The Importance of Being Ernest

It is a common misconception that economists don’t have feelings. We do, just like normal people. But we do tend to struggle a bit when it comes to expressing those feelings, due to our natural pragmatism that has been enhanced by years of training. If you tell someone you really like that they are second best, an economist will understand this is a massive compliment: this person is the best you could ever hope to find in a real, imperfect world. However, someone less trained in distinguishing between feasible and non-feasible solutions may find this rather odd and offensive. Why wouldn’t you just tell them they are first best, or simply perfect?

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