2403MS07

Experimental Research and Behavioral Decision Making

Concepts in behavioral economics such as loss aversion, anchoring, overconfidence and reciprocity are increasingly used to explain deviations from rational behavior in economic decisions. In this PhD course, basic models of behavioral economics and theories used to explain behavior that differs from standard economic assumptions are presented and imparted based on experimental studies. For this purpose, the essential methodological foundations of experimental economic research are first introduced, anchored in scientific theory, and delimited from experimental research of neighboring disciplines. In the further course, experimental studies in particular from the fields of economics and management research will be extensively reviewed and discussed in order to present the concepts of behavioral economics, their advancement to explain economic decisions and their wide applications in policies and programs. In order to directly apply the acquired knowledge, the participants will elaborate in small groups a research question to which they develop their own experimental design, write instructions and derive potential predictions about the behavioral outcome. Each group will present their work in plenary on the last day of the course. Along with lectures about behavioral and experimental research, there will be an introduction to programming with oTree within several tutorials. The lectures about oTree will give participants a fine overview and first experience with the programming language that is expected to be extremely helpful in programming experiments for future experimental studies in the PhD career.