Urs Fischbacher (born 17 September 1959 in Dietikon, Zürich) 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. [1] He pioneered the field of software tools for experimental economics. [2]
A native of Dietikon (Switzerland), Urs Fischbacher studied mathematics at the University of Zurich from 1978 to 1985, earning a doctoral degree under Prof. Dr. Pierre Gabriel with a thesis on the combinatorics of algebras with finite ideals. Thereafter, Fischbacher worked as a software developer in the private sector for Mettler Instrumente (1985–87) and Mecasoft AG (1987-81) before becoming a researcher at the Swiss Federal Institute WSL. In 1995, Fischbacher began working at the Institute for Empirical Research in Economics on the development of z-Tree, a programming language for the implementation of scientific laboratory experiments that is being used worldwide in numerous research institutions., [3] [4] where he also began to perform research in experimental economics. This research resulted in his habilitation in economics in 2006 on the topics of human motivation and cooperation. Since 2007, Fischbacher has been a full professor at the University of Konstanz and the head of the Thurgau Institute of Economics. Additionally, he has also held visiting appointments at Harvard Business School, the University of Copenhagen, the University of Nottingham, and the University of Maastricht. In terms of professional service, Fischbacher performs editorial duties at the European Journal of Political Economy , the Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics , and Experimental Economics , among others. [5]
Urs Fischbacher's research areas include experimental economics, behavioral economics and neuroeconomics. According to IDEAS/RePEc, he belongs to the 1% of most highly cited economists. [6] Key findings of his research include:
Fischbacher is listed by Thomson Reuters in the "Highly Cited Researchers 2014" list as one of the world's most cited scientists. [15] In the FAZ economists 2014 Rankings, he finished second. [16] In December 2016, Fischbacher was awarded the Joachim Herz Research prize for "Best research work". The prize acknowledged his research on reciprocity in social exchange and the development of the z-Tree laboratory software. [17]
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.
Neuroeconomics is an interdisciplinary field that seeks to explain human decision-making, the ability to process multiple alternatives and to follow through on a plan of action. It studies how economic behavior can shape our understanding of the brain, and how neuroscientific discoveries can guide models of economics.
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.
In social psychology, reciprocity is a social norm of responding to a positive action with another positive action, rewarding kind actions. As a social construct, reciprocity means that in response to friendly actions, people are frequently much nicer and much more cooperative than predicted by the self-interest model; conversely, in response to hostile actions they are frequently much more nasty and even brutal. It has also been called reciprocity bias.
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.
Inequity aversion (IA) is the preference for fairness and resistance to incidental inequalities. The social sciences that study inequity aversion include sociology, economics, psychology, anthropology, and ethology. Researches on inequity aversion aim to explain behaviors that are not purely driven by self-interests but fairness considerations.
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.
Ernst Fehr is an Austrian-Swiss behavioral economist and neuroeconomist and a Professor of Microeconomics and Experimental Economic Research, as well as the vice chairman of the Department of Economics at the University of Zürich, Switzerland. His research covers the areas of the evolution of human cooperation and sociality, in particular fairness, reciprocity and bounded rationality.
Samuel Stebbins Bowles, is an American economist and Professor Emeritus at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, where he continues to teach courses on microeconomics and the theory of institutions. His work belongs to the neo-Marxian tradition of economic thought. However, his perspective on economics is eclectic and draws on various schools of thought, including what he and others refer to as post-Walrasian economics.
Quantal response equilibrium (QRE) is a solution concept in game theory. First introduced by Richard McKelvey and Thomas Palfrey, it provides an equilibrium notion with bounded rationality. QRE is not an equilibrium refinement, and it can give significantly different results from Nash equilibrium. QRE is only defined for games with discrete strategies, although there are continuous-strategy analogues.
Herbert Gintis was an American economist, behavioral scientist, and educator known for his theoretical contributions to sociobiology, especially altruism, cooperation, epistemic game theory, gene-culture coevolution, efficiency wages, strong reciprocity, and human capital theory. Throughout his career, he worked extensively with economist Samuel Bowles. Their landmark book, Schooling in Capitalist America, had multiple editions in five languages since it was first published in 1976. Their book, A Cooperative Species: Human Reciprocity and its Evolution was published by Princeton University Press in 2011.
Strong reciprocity is an area of research in behavioral economics, evolutionary psychology, and evolutionary anthropology on the predisposition to cooperate even when there is no apparent benefit in doing so. This topic is particularly interesting to those studying the evolution of cooperation, as these behaviors seem to be in contradiction with predictions made by many models of cooperation. In response, current work on strong reciprocity is focused on developing evolutionary models which can account for this behavior. Critics of strong reciprocity argue that it is an artifact of lab experiments and does not reflect cooperative behavior in the real world.
Armin Falk is a German economist. He has held a chair at the University of Bonn since 2003.
Homo reciprocans, or reciprocating human, is the concept in some economic theories of humans as cooperative actors who are motivated by improving their environment through positive reciprocity or negative reciprocity, even in situations without foreseeable benefit for themselves.
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.
Third-party punishment, or altruistic punishment, is punishment of a transgressor which is administered, not by a victim of the transgression, but rather by a third party not directly affected by the transgression. It has been argued that third-party punishments are the essence of social norms, as they are an evolutionarily stable strategy, unlike second-party punishments. It has also been shown that third-party punishments are exhibited in all examined populations, though the magnitude of the punishments varies greatly, and that costly punishment co-varies with altruistic behavior. Differences between within-group and inter-group altruistic punishments have also been observed.
Behavioral game theory seeks to examine how people's strategic decision-making behavior is shaped by social preferences, social utility and other psychological factors. Behavioral game theory analyzes interactive strategic decisions and behavior using the methods of game theory, experimental economics, and experimental psychology. Experiments include testing deviations from typical simplifications of economic theory such as the independence axiom and neglect of altruism, fairness, and framing effects. As a research program, the subject is a development of the last three decades.
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.
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.
Parochial altruism is a concept in social psychology, evolutionary biology, and anthropology that describes altruism towards an in-group, often accompanied by hostility towards an out-group. It is a combination of altruism, defined as behavior done for the benefit of others without direct effect on the self, and parochialism, which refers to having a limited viewpoint. Together, these concepts create parochial altruism, or altruism which is limited in scope to one's in-group. Parochial altruism is closely related to the concepts of in-group favoritism and out-group discrimination. Research has suggested that parochial altruism may have evolved in humans to promote high levels of in-group cooperation, which is advantageous for group survival. Parochial altruism is often evoked to explain social behaviors within and between groups, such as why people are cooperative within their social groups and why they may be aggressive towards other social groups.
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