Friederike Mengel

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Friederike Mengel (born March 27, 1979) is a German economist who is a Professor of economics at the University of Essex. [1]

Contents

Education and career

Friederike Mengel earned an undergraduate degree in economics from the University of Mainz in 2003, followed by a PhD in economics from the University of Alicante in 2008, under the supervision of Fernando Vega Redondo. After her PhD, she joined Maastricht University where she was an Assistant Professor from 2008 to 2011 and an Associate Professor from 2011 to 2013. After a period at the University of Nottingham, she joined the University of Essex in 2012 where she has been a Professor since 2015. [2] In 2019 she received the Philipp Leverhulme Prize in Economics. [3]

Research

Mengel's research areas are (Evolutionary) Game Theory, Learning, Behavioral Economics, Social Networks and Experimental Economics. [4] She developed a theory of learning across games, where agents might partition a set of all games into categories. Learning across games can destabilize strict Nash equilibria even for arbitrarily small reasoning costs and even if players distinguish all the games at the stable point. The model is also able to explain a number of experimental findings. [5]

Mengel has also done work on social identity and on how people learn in social networks. Her work uncovered that people pay attention to others network position when learning, but only partially and they do not update in a Bayesian way. [6] Their work with J. Kovarik and J. Romero [7] was awarded the Best Paper Award by the Econometric Society in 2019. [8]

Selected publications

Related Research Articles

Game theory is the study of mathematical models of strategic interactions among rational agents. It has applications in many fields of social science, used extensively in economics as well as in logic, systems science and computer science. Traditional game theory addressed two-person zero-sum games, in which a participant's gains or losses are exactly balanced by the losses and gains of the other participant. In the 21st century, game theory applies to a wider range of behavioral relations, and it is now an umbrella term for the science of logical decision making in humans, animals, as well as computers.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Behavioral economics</span> Academic discipline

Behavioral economics is the study of the psychological, cognitive, emotional, cultural and social factors involved in the decisions of individuals or institutions, and how these decisions deviate from those implied by classical economic theory.

Experimental economics is the application of experimental methods to study economic questions. Data collected in experiments are used to estimate effect size, test the validity of economic theories, and illuminate market mechanisms. Economic experiments usually use cash to motivate subjects, in order to mimic real-world incentives. Experiments are used to help understand how and why markets and other exchange systems function as they do. Experimental economics have also expanded to understand institutions and the law.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ultimatum game</span> Game in economic experiments

The ultimatum game is a game that has become a popular instrument of economic experiments. An early description is by Nobel laureate John Harsanyi in 1961. One player, the proposer, is endowed with a sum of money. The proposer is tasked with splitting it with another player, the responder. Once the proposer communicates his decision, the responder may accept it or reject it. If the responder accepts, the money is split per the proposal; if the responder rejects, both players receive nothing. Both players know in advance the consequences of the responder accepting or rejecting the offer.

In game theory, the centipede game, first introduced by Robert Rosenthal in 1981, is an extensive form game in which two players take turns choosing either to take a slightly larger share of an increasing pot, or to pass the pot to the other player. The payoffs are arranged so that if one passes the pot to one's opponent and the opponent takes the pot on the next round, one receives slightly less than if one had taken the pot on this round, but after an additional switch the potential payoff will be higher. Therefore, although at each round a player has an incentive to take the pot, it would be better for them to wait. Although the traditional centipede game had a limit of 100 rounds, any game with this structure but a different number of rounds is called a centipede game.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Field experiment</span> Experiment conducted outside the laboratory

Field experiments are experiments carried out outside of laboratory settings.

Information economics or the economics of information is the branch of microeconomics that studies how information and information systems affect an economy and economic decisions.

The dictator game is a popular experimental instrument in social psychology and economics, a derivative of the ultimatum game. The term "game" is a misnomer because it captures a decision by a single player: to send money to another or not. Thus, the dictator has the most power and holds the preferred position in this “game.” Although the “dictator” has the most power and presents a take it or leave it offer, the game has mixed results based on different behavioral attributes. The results – where most "dictators" choose to send money – evidence the role of fairness and norms in economic behavior, and undermine the assumption of narrow self-interest when given the opportunity to maximise one's own profits.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Public goods game</span> Experimental economics game

The public goods game is a standard of experimental economics. In the basic game, subjects secretly choose how many of their private tokens to put into a public pot. The tokens in this pot are multiplied by a factor and this "public good" payoff is evenly divided among players. Each subject also keeps the tokens they do not contribute.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">John A. List</span> American economist

John August List is an American economist known for his work in establishing field experiments as a tool in empirical economic analysis. Since 2016, he has served as the Kenneth C. Griffin Distinguished Service Professor of Economics at the University of Chicago, where he was Chairman of the Department of Economics from 2012 to 2018. Since 2016, he has also served as Visiting Robert F. Hartsook Chair in Fundraising at the Lilly Family School of Philanthropy at Indiana University.

Cultural economics is the branch of economics that studies the relation of culture to economic outcomes. Here, 'culture' is defined by shared beliefs and preferences of respective groups. Programmatic issues include whether and how much culture matters as to economic outcomes and what its relation is to institutions. As a growing field in behavioral economics, the role of culture in economic behavior is increasingly being demonstrated to cause significant differentials in decision-making and the management and valuation of assets.

A simulation game is "a game that contains a mixture of skill, chance, and strategy to simulate an aspect of reality, such as a stock exchange". Similarly, Finnish author Virpi Ruohomäki states that "a simulation game combines the features of a game with those of a simulation. A game is a simulation game if its rules refer to an empirical model of reality". A properly built simulation game used to teach or learn economics would closely follow the assumptions and rules of the theoretical models within this discipline.

Social preferences describe the human tendency to not only care about one's own material payoff, but also the reference group's payoff or/and the intention that leads to the payoff. Social preferences are studied extensively in behavioral and experimental economics and social psychology. Types of social preferences include altruism, fairness, reciprocity, and inequity aversion. The field of economics originally assumed that humans were rational economic actors, and as it became apparent that this was not the case, the field began to change. The research of social preferences in economics started with lab experiments in 1980, where experimental economists found subjects' behavior deviated systematically from self-interest behavior in economic games such as ultimatum game and dictator game. These experimental findings then inspired various new economic models to characterize agent's altruism, fairness and reciprocity concern between 1990 and 2010. More recently, there are growing amounts of field experiments that study the shaping of social preference and its applications throughout society.

Xavier Vives is a Spanish economist regarded as one of the main figures in the field of industrial organization and, more broadly, microeconomics. He is currently Chaired Professor of Regulation, Competition and Public Policies, and academic director of the Public-Private Sector Research Center at IESE Business School in Barcelona.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Uri Gneezy</span> Israeli-American behavioral economist

Uri Hezkia Gneezy is an Israeli-American behavioral economist, known for his work on incentives. He currently holds the Epstein/Atkinson Endowed Chair in Behavioral Economics at the University of California, San Diego's Rady School of Management. He is also a visiting research professor at the University of Amsterdam and NHH in Bergen.

Gary Charness is Professor of Economics and the Director of the Experimental and Behavioral Economics Laboratory in the Department of Economics at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Charness is an economist and social scientist, specializing in experimental and behavioral work; he is currently ranked 3rd in the world by RePEc in the field of experimental economics and has published nearly 80 academic articles. Charness is a contributor to several areas of economic research, including social preferences, identity and group membership, communication and beliefs, behavioral interventions, group decision-making, social networks, gender, and individual decision-making. A centerpiece of his research has been to effect beneficial social outcomes in difficult economic environments. Charness's work has been discussed and published in The New York Times and Science, as well as in other media. Charness is married and has three children.

Urs Fischbacher is a Swiss economist and professor of applied economic research at the University of Konstanz. He is director of the Thurgau Economic Institute, an affiliated institute of the University of Konstanz. He pioneered the field of software tools for experimental economics.

Eleonora Patacchini is an economist specializing in applied economics and applied statistics who grew up in Italy with her mother who was also a professor. She is a professor and associate department chair at Cornell University in the Department of Economics. Her research focuses on the empirical analysis of behavioral models of strategic interactions for decision making. Patacchini is an associate editor at Journal of Urban Economics and Statistical Methods & Applications. She is a columnist at the VOX CEPR Policy Portal where research-based policy analysis and commentary from leading economists are published frequently. She is also a co-editor of E-journal Economics and associate editor of the Journal of Urban Economics.

The gift-exchange game, also commonly known as the gift exchange dilemma, is a common economic game introduced by George Akerlof and Janet Yellen to model reciprocacy in labor relations. The gift-exchange game simulates a labor-management relationship execution problem in the principal-agent problem in labor economics. The simplest form of the game involves two players – an employee and an employer. The employer first decides whether they should award a higher salary to the employee. The employee then decides whether to reciprocate with a higher level of effort due to the salary increase or not. Like trust games, gift-exchange games are used to study reciprocity for human subject research in social psychology and economics. If the employer pays extra salary and the employee puts in extra effort, then both players are better off than otherwise. The relationship between an investor and an investee has been investigated as the same type of a game.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Andries de Grip</span> Economist (Maastricht University)

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References

  1. "Profile for Friederike Mengel at the University of Essex". www.essex.ac.uk.
  2. "CV".
  3. "Philip Leverhulme Prizes 2019 | The Leverhulme Trust". www.leverhulme.ac.uk.
  4. "Friederike Mengel". scholar.google.co.uk.
  5. 1 2 Mengel, Friederike (March 1, 2012). "Learning across games". Games and Economic Behavior. 74 (2): 601–619. doi:10.1016/j.geb.2011.08.020 via ScienceDirect.
  6. 1 2 Mengel, Friederike; Grimm, Veronika (2020). "Experiments on Belief Formation in Networks". Journal of the European Economic Association. 18: 49–82. doi:10.1093/jeea/jvy038.
  7. 1 2 Kovářík, Jaromír; Mengel, Friederike; Romero, José Gabriel (March 4, 2018). "Learning in network games". Quantitative Economics. 9 (1): 85–139. doi: 10.3982/QE688 .
  8. "Best Paper Awards | The Econometric Society". www.econometricsociety.org.
  9. Drago, Francesco; Mengel, Friederike; Traxler, Christian (April 2, 2020). "Compliance Behavior in Networks: Evidence from a Field Experiment". American Economic Journal: Applied Economics. 12 (2): 96–133. doi:10.1257/app.20170690. S2CID   55527778 via www.aeaweb.org.
  10. Grimm, Veronika; Mengel, Friederike (November 1, 2012). "An experiment on learning in a multiple games environment". Journal of Economic Theory. 147 (6): 2220–2259. doi:10.1016/j.jet.2012.05.011 via ScienceDirect.
  11. Mengel, Friederike (2020). "Gender differences in networking". The Economic Journal. 130 (630): 1842–1873. doi:10.1093/ej/ueaa035.
  12. Mengel, Friederike; Sauermann, Jan; Zölitz, Ulf (2019). "Gender Bias in Teaching Evaluations". Journal of the European Economic Association. 17 (2): 535–566. doi:10.1093/jeea/jvx057. hdl: 10419/185467 .
  13. Calo-Blanco, Aitor; Kovářík, Jaromír; Mengel, Friederike; Romero, José Gabriel (June 7, 2017). "Natural disasters and indicators of social cohesion". PLOS ONE. 12 (6): e0176885. Bibcode:2017PLoSO..1276885C. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0176885 . PMC   5462365 . PMID   28591148.