Projects & Foci

Reward Processing And Decision Making

Project Leader

Research activity

Biographical note

I am Professor in Microeconomics and Experimental Economics at the University of Zürich. In addition, I have the following positions or affiliations: Director of the Institute for Empirical Research in Economics at the University of Zürich, fellow at the Collegium Helveticum, affiliated faculty member of the Department of Economics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, director of the Ludwig Boltzmann Institute for the Analysis of Economic Growth in Vienna, member of the German Academy of Natural Scientists Leopoldina and, currently, Vice President of the European Economic Association.

I graduated at the University of Vienna in 1980 where I also earned my doctorate in 1986. I am a member of the board of reviewing editors at Science, on the editorial board of the Quarterly Journal of Economics, Games and Economic Behavior, the Journal of the European Economic Association, the Journal of Public Economics, Experimental Economics and the Journal of Socio-Economics. I won the Gossen Prize of the German Economic Association in 1999, the Hicks-Tinbergen Medal of the European Economic Association in 2000, received an honorary doctorate from the University of St. Gallen in 2004 and won the Cogito Prize in 2004.

Current research

My research focuses on the proximate patterns and the evolutionary origins of human altruism and the interplay between social preferences, social norms and strategic interactions. I have conducted extensive research on the impact of social preferences on competition, cooperation and on the psychological foundations of incentives. More recently I have worked on the role of bounded rationality in strategic interactions and on the neuroscientific foundations of social and economic behaviour. My work is characterized by the combination of game theoretic tools with experimental methods and the use of insights from psychology, sociology, biology and neuroscience for a better understanding of human social behavior.

List of publications

 

The most recent papers

Other-regarding preferences in a non-human primate: Common marmosets provision food altruistically. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 104 (50), 11 December 2007, 19762–19766 (with Judith M. Burkart, Charles Efferson, and Carel P. van Schaik).

Studying the Neurobiology of Social Interaction with Transcranial Direct Current Stimulation - The Examples of Punishing Unfairness. Cerebral Cortex 17 (12), 24 December 2007 (with Daria Knoch, Michael A. Nitsche, Urs Fischbacher, Christoph Eisenegger and Alvaro Pascual-Leone).

Limited Rationality and Strategic Interaction: The Impact of the Strategic Environment on Nominal Inertia. Econometrica 76 (2), March 2008, 353–394 (with Jean-Robert Tyran).

Do Workers Work More if Wages Are High? Evidence from a Randomized Field Experiment. The American Economic Review 97 (1), March 2008, 298-317 (with Lorenz Götte).

Human Motivation and Social Cooperation: Experimental and Analytical Foundations. The American Economic Review 97 (1), March 2008, 298-317 (with Lorenz Götte).

The Neural Signature of Social Norm Compliance. The American Economic Review 97 (1), March 2008, 298-317 (with Lorenz Götte).

Social neuroeconomics: The neural circuitry of social preferences. The American Economic Review 97 (1), March 2008, 298-317 (with Lorenz Götte).

 

The most recent books

Foundations of Human Sociality – Economic Experiments and Ethnographic Evidence from Fifteen Small Scale Societies, Oxford University Press, Oxford 2004 (joint with Joe Henrich, Robert Boyd, Samuel Bowles, Colin Camerer and Herbert Gintis).

Moral Sentiments and Material Interests, MIT Press, Cambridge Massachusetts 2005 (joint with Robert Boyd, Samual Bowles and Herbert Gintis).

 

Published Papers 2001-2007

Robustness and Real Consequences of Nominal Wage Rigidity, Journal of Monetary Economics 52 (2005), 779-804 (with L. Götte)

Human Altruism: Economic, Neural and Evolutionary Perspectives, Current Opinions in Neurobiology 14 (2004), 784-790 (with B. Rockenbach).

Egalitarian Motive and Altruistic Punishment, NATURE 433, E1-E2, January 2005. (with S. Gächter).

Don’t lose your Reputation, NATURE 432, 25 November 2004, 449-450.

The Hidden Costs and Rewards of Incentives – Trust and Trustworthiness among CEOs, Journal of the European Economic Association 2 (2004), 741-771. (with J. List)

The Neural Basis of Altruistic Punishment, SCIENCE 305, 1254-1258, 2004. (with D. DeQuervain, U. Fischbacher, V. Treyer, M. Schellhammer, A. Buck).

Relational Contracts and the Nature of Market Interactions, Econometrica 72 (2004), 747-780. (with M. Brown and A. Falk).

Fairness and Incentives in a Multi-task Principal-Agent Model, Scandinavian Journal of Economics 106 (2004), 453-474. (with K. Schmidt).

Loss Aversion and Labour Supply, Journal of the European Economic Association 2-3 (2004), 216-228. (with L. Goette and D. Huffman).

Social Norms and Human Cooperation, Trends in Cognitive Sciences 8 (2004), 185-190. (with Urs Fischbacher).

Third Party Punishment and Social Norms, Evolution and Human Behavior 25 (2004), 63-87. (with Urs Fischbacher).

The Nature of Human Altruism, NATURE 425, 23 October 2003, 785-791. (with Urs Fischbacher).

Explaining altruistic behavior in humans, Evolution and Human Behavior 24 (2003) 153–172 (with Herbert Gintis, Samuel Bowles, Robert Boyd).

Is Strong Reciprocity a Maladaptation – On the Evolutionary Foundations of Human Altruism. in: P. Hammerstein (Ed.), The Genetic and Cultural Evolution of Cooperation. MIT Press, Cambridge, Mass. 2003. (with J. Henrich).

Measuring Social Norms and Preferences Using Experimental Games: A Guide for Social Scientists. forthcoming in: J. Henrich, R. Boyd, S. Bowles, C. Camerer, E. Fehr, H. Gintis, R. McElreath (Eds.): Foundations of Human Sociality, Oxford University Press, Oxford 2004. (with C. Camerer)

Detrimental Effects of Sanctions on Human Altruism, NATURE 422, 13 March 2003, 137-140. (with B. Rockenbach).

The Puzzle of Human Cooperation, NATURE 421, 27 February 2003, 912. (with S. Gächter).

On the Nature of Fair Behavior. Economic Enquiry 41 (2003), 20 – 26. (with A. Falk and U. Fischbacher)

What Causes Nominal Inertia – Insights from Experimental Economics. In: Juan Carillo and Isabelle Brocas (Eds.), Collected Essays in Psychology and Economics, Oxford University Press 2003. (with J.R. Tyran)

Theories of Fairness and Reciprocity – Evidence and Economic Applications. Invited Lecture at the 8th World Congress of the Econometric Society. In: M. Dewatripont, L. Hansen and St. Turnovsky (Eds.), Advances in Economics and Econometrics – 8th World Congress, Econometric Society Monographs, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press 2003. (with K. Schmidt)

A Nation-Wide Laboratory - Examining Trust and Trustworthiness by Integrating Experiments in Representative Surveys, Schmollers Jahrbuch 122 (2002), 519 – 542. (with U. Fischbacher, B.v. Rosenbladt, J. Schupp and G. Wagner).

Reasons for Conflicts – Lessons from Bargaining Experiments. Journal of Institutional and Theoretical Economics 159 (2003), 171 – 187 (with A. Falk and U. Fischbacher).

Why Labour Market Experiments. Labour Economics 10 (2003), 399 – 406 (with A. Falk).

Psychological Foundations of Incentives. Schumpeter Lecture at the European Economic Association Meeting 2001. European Economic Review 46 (2002), 687 – 724. (with A. Falk)

Why Social Preferences Matter – The Impact of Non-selfish Motives on Competition, Cooperation and Incentives. Frank Hahn Lecture at the annual meeting of the Royal Economic Society 2001. Economic Journal 112 (2002), C1 – C33. (with U. Fischbacher)

Strong Reciprocity, Human Cooperation and the Enforcement of Social Norms. HUMAN NATURE 13 (2002), 1 – 25. (with U. Fischbacher and S. Gächter)

The Economics of Impatience, NATURE 415, 17 January 2002, 269-270.

Altruistic Punishment in Humans. NATURE 415, 10 January 2002, 137-140. (with S. Gächter)

Appropriating the Commons – A Theoretical Explanation. in: E. Ostrom, Th. Dietz, N. Dolšak, P. Stern, S. Stonich, E. Weber (Eds.), The Drama of the Commons. National Academy Press, February 2002. (with A. Falk and U. Fischbacher)

Does Money Illusion Matter? American Economic Review 91 (2001), 1239-1262. (with J. R. Tyran)

In Search of Homo Economicus - Behavioral Experiments in 15 Small Scale Societies. American Economic Review (Papers and Proceedings) 91 (2001), 73-78. (with J. Henrich, R. Boyd, S. Bowles, H. Gintis, C. Camerer and R. McElreath).

Are people conditionally cooperative? Evidence from a public goods experiment, Economics Letters, Volume 71, Issue 3, June 2001, Pages 397-404. (with U. Fischbacher and S. Gächter)

 

 

My publications

http://www.affective-sciences.org/user/66/publications