Colloquium

María Jiménez Buedo

Universidad Nacional de Educación a Distancia – UNED

	Tuesday, 4th December @ 1:30 PM
	“Experimenter Demand Effects: Can We Really Measure Them?”
	Zizzo’s (2010) conceptualization of experimenter demand effects has quickly caught on and now constitutes the standard definition in many experimental subdisciplines in the Social Sciences. I take issue with recent attempts to measure and operationalize EDEs and analize their limitations as well as the more problematic aspects of Zizzo’s original…
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Colloquium

Alessandro del Ponte

Stony Brook University

	Thursday, 6th December @ 1:30 PM
	“Saving and Spending in Hard Times”
	Amid recent financial crises, political debates over fiscal policy ultimately hinge on whether citizens spend too much, too little, or just right. Previous experiments find that people typically spend too much because of how they discount the future. I propose that people’s motive to preserve their savings can instead cause them to spend too little in hard times. I design….
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Colloquium

Peiran Jiao

Maastricht University

	Today, 26th November @ 1:30 PM
	“Incentives to Sleep: An Experimental Analysis of Sleep Choices”
	This paper investigates whether monetary incentives can be used to promote healthier sleep habits. We collected detailed data drawn from wearable sleep trackers and randomized monetary incentives to sleep. Subjects in the treatment group significantly increased their sleep duration. There is evidence of demand for commitment and sophisticated…
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Colloquium

Vessela Daskalova

Institute for Advanced Study in Toulouse (IAST)

	Wednesday, 28th November @ 1:30 PM
	“Signaling Identity”
	This experiment focuses on two questions: First, are individuals willing to incur a cost to signal their true (or false) group identity to a person they are matched to interact with? Second, we test whether a true (or false) identity signal can help players to coordinate on a more socially efficient outcome in subsequent play of a coordination game involving a risk-return…
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Colloquium

Aluma Dembo

University of Oxford

	Tuesday 20th November @ 1:30 PM
	“Emotions and Decision-making Over Risk: Results from a Mobile Experiment”
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Colloquium

Soledad Prillaman

	13th November @ 1:30 PM
	“Women’s Pathways to Politics: Political Participation, Representation, and Local Governance in India.”
	Women’s political participation is important not only on normative grounds of inclusion, but because past research shows that when women do participate, politics often changes. Yet we know little about how to increase women’s political participation and electoral representation as well as about the link between women’s path to participation/representation and…
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Seminar

Sander van der Linden

	14th November @ 3:30 PM
	“Inoculating Against Misinformation: On the Motivated Cognition of Facts and Expertise.”
	Are we living in a post-truth society? What is the current status of “facts” and “expertise”? In this talk, I will discuss recent psychological theorizing around fake news, attitude polarization, motivated cognition, and misinformation. I’ll start by presenting a series of experimental studies examining the crucial role of expert consensus in how people form judgments about…
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Seminar

Stephanie Wang

University of Pittsburgh

	Wednesday 7th November @ 3:30 PM
	“Loss Attitudes in the U.S. Population: Evidence from Dynamically Optimized Sequential Experimentation (DOSE).”
	We introduce DOSE — Dynamically Optimized Sequential Experimentation — and use it to estimate individual-level loss aversion in a representative sample of the U.S. population (N = 2,000). DOSE elicitations are more accurate, more stable across time, and faster to administer than standard methods. We find that around 50% of the U.S. population is loss…
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Seminar

Rosemarie Nagel

Universitat Pompeu Fabra Barcelona

	Thursday 1st November @ 2:30 PM
	“The Keynesian Beauty Contest: An Economic System, the Mind, and the Brain”
	We discuss three different aspects within the framework of the Keynesian Beauty Contest, which in its original form consists of the following simple rule: subjects choose from a close interval, say, 0 to 100 with the target to be closest to p times the average of all chosen number, with e.g., p=2/3 and a fixed payoff for the winner(s). In the first part, we present several…
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Colloquium

Fijnanda van Klingeren

	23rd October @ 1:30 PM
	“Heterogeneity, Trust and Sustainable Cooperation: An Experimental Test”
	Empirically analysing the influence of heterogeneity in populations in real-life settings is difficult, due to the amount of confounding factors that influence success and failure in real-life settings; you may never find two identical CPRs in identical situations with different levels of heterogeneity to use in a natural experiment. This can be solved to a large extent by…
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Seminar

Alistair Wilson

	24th October @ 3:30 PM
	“The Times They are a-Changing: Dynamic Adverse Selection in the Laboratory”
	Across a variety of contexts decision-makers exhibit a robust failure to understand the interaction of private information and strategy, with one prominent example being the winner’s curse. Such failures have generally been observed in static settings, where participants fail to think through a future hypothetical. We use a laboratory experiment to examine a…
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Post-Doctoral Research Fellowship at the Institute for Advanced Study in Toulouse

Researchers can now apply for 3-year post-doctoral research fellowship positions at the Institute for Advanced Study in Toulouse. All research interests relevant to the broad study of human behavior are welcome, but interests that complement those already developed at IAST will be given special consideration. Application deadline: November 30.

Colloquium

JONAS FREY

	16th October @ 1:30 PM
	“Expectations About Trading Returns and the Self-Attribution Bias”
	Previous research indicates that individual investors are susceptible to the self-attribution bias, namely the tendency to attribute success to internal factors such as skill and to attribute failures to external factors such as chance. However, little is known about how these attributions affect…
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Seminar

RAJSHRI JAYARAMAN

	17th October @ 3:30 PM
	“The Effect of Choosing Teams and Ideas on Entrepreneurial Performance: Evidence from a Field Experiment”
	In a natural field experiment with 900+ subjects in 300+ teams, we study the effects of choosing team members versus ideas on entrepreneurial team performance. We use a two-by-two design in which subjects are randomly assigned to one of four treatments in which they…
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Measuring the Tricky Things

We are very pleased to announce the workshop Measuring the Tricky Things to be held at Nuffield College 12-13^th October 2018.

The workshop is open to faculty graduate students, but spaces are limited. We are looking for volunteers to take notes for the group sessions. If you are interested, please contact James Walsh at james.walsh@nuffield.ox.ac.uk or visit the workshop webpage for more information (link in the button below).

The goals of the workshop are twofold. We aim to:

1. bring together scholars working on state-of-the-art measurement techniques on things that are difficult to measure to share best practices;
2. synthesize the knowledge from the workshop with the production of a practical toolkit for academic and policy researchers.

Measuring the Tricky Things

We are very pleased to announce the workshop Measuring the Tricky Things to be held at Nuffield College 12-13^th October 2018.

The workshop is open to faculty graduate students, but spaces are limited. We are looking for volunteers to take notes for the group sessions. If you are interested, please contact James Walsh at james.walsh@nuffield.ox.ac.uk or visit the workshop webpage for more information (link in the button below).

The goals of the workshop are twofold. We aim to:

1. bring together scholars working on state-of-the-art measurement techniques on things that are difficult to measure to share best practices;
2. synthesize the knowledge from the workshop with the production of a practical toolkit for academic and policy researchers.

Comparative Time-Sharing Experiments (CTSE)

We are very pleased to announce the launch of Comparative Time-Sharing Experiments (CTSE). CTSE is intended to offer access to the four principal student and non-student online subject pools of the Centre of Experimental Social Sciences (CESS), Nuffield College located in the UK, Chile, India and China, to researchers free of charge. CTSE will thus allow graduate students of the University of Oxford and CESS to conduct subsidised experiments in China, Chile, and India.

Current graduate students wishing to participate in CTSE have submitted proposals for a module of an experimental study. The selected proposals will be announced during Week 0 of Michaelmas.

Find more information about CTSE by clicking in the button below:

Participate in CTSE

SEMINAR

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Astrid Hopfensitz

Toulouse School of Economics

 

Date: 12^th June 2018

Time: 12:30 PM
Venue: Butler Room – Nuffield College
Title: “What if Women Earned More Than Their Spouses? An Experimental Investigation of Work-Division in Couples”
Abstract: Female specialization on household work and male specialization on labor-market work is a widely observed phenomenon across time and countries. This absence of gender neutrality with respect to work-division is known as the ‘‘work-division puzzle’’. Gender differences regarding characteristics (preferences, productivity) and context (wage rates, social norms) are generally… READ MORE

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Steven E. Finkel

University of Pittsburgh

 

Date: 6^th June 2018

Time: 4:00 PM
Venue: Butler Room – Nuffield College
Title: “Where Terror Lies: Social Desirability Bias and Violent Extremism in the Sahel”
Abstract: Researchers have commonly treated social desirability biases in survey questions as a measurement or statistical nuisance rather than a phenomenon of substantive importance. This study departs from that approach and envisages bias in support for violent extremism – both under- and over-reporting – as a phenomenon with important implications for how terrorist… READ MORE

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Jon Krosnick

Stanford University

 

Date: 7^th June 2018

Time: 2:00 PM
Venue: Clay Room – Nuffield College
Title: “Social and Political Psychology Experiments Under the Microscope: Do Our Classic Experiments Replicate When Participants Are Representative of the General Public Rather Than Convenience Samples of College Students?”
Abstract:Since David Sears’s provocative article in JPSP in the late 1980s about social psychology’s nearly exclusive reliance on American college sophomores as our research participants, the field has become increasingly interested in studying social phenomena outside of that group. Recent years have seen growing interest in the impact of culture (studied via comparisons of people across… READ MORE

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Robert Metcalfe

University of Boston

 

Date: 1^st June 2018

Time: 2:00 PM
Venue: Butler Room – Nuffield College
Title: “The Welfare Effects of Social Recognition: Theory and Evidence from a Field Experiment with the YMCA”
Abstract: A growing body of empirical work shows that social recognition can meaningfully influence individuals’ choices. This paper investigates whether social recognition is a socially efficient lever for influencing individuals’ decisions. Theoretically, we show that whether social recognition is more efficient than financial incentives depends on the shape of the social… READ MORE

COLLOQUIUM

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Florian Foos

King’s College London

 

Date: 22^nd May 2018

Time: 12:30 PM
Venue: CESS Seminar Room (3 George Street Mews, Oxford, OX1 2AA).
Title: “The Parliamentary Candidate as Persuader: Evidence from Randomized Candidate-Voter Interactions”
Abstract: Despite a renewed focus on electoral persuasion and principal-agent problems in ground campaigns, the role of parliamentary candidates in persuading voters has received little attention. While recent research shows that campaign volunteers can be ineffective at persuading voters, candidates should be better persuaders because persuasion is a key quality required to be… READ MORE

SEMINAR

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Urs Fischbacher

University of Konstanz

 

Date: 23^rd May 2018

Time: 4:00 PM
Venue: The Butler Room, Nuffield College
Title: “Incentives for Conformity and Disconformity”
Abstract: There is abundant evidence for conformity but there are also situations in which people try to set themselves apart. We investigate how punishment and reward affect these behaviors. We rely on a 3 (punishment vs. no incentive vs. reward) x 2 (arts vs. quiz) experiment design. First, two subjects make a binary choice. In the arts treatment, they choose one out of two… READ MORE

Time: 12:30 PM
Venue: CESS Seminar Room (3 George Street Mews, Oxford, OX1 2AA).
Title: “Explaining Support for Non-contributory Social Policy: Evidence from a Survey Experiment in Argentina”
Abstract: Standard arguments in comparative political economy predict that protected labour market insiders oppose redistribution to poorer labour market outsiders, often working in the informal sector. Opposition from insiders may thus prevent the expansion of non-contributory social policies that mitigate poverty in developing countries around the world. In contrast, this paper… READ MORE

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Kevin Arceneaux

Temple University

 

Date: 18^th May 2018

Time: 2:00 PM
Venue: The Butler Room, Nuffield College
Title: “Taming Intuition: How Reflection Minimizes Partisan Biases”
Abstract: Democracy rests on the idea that the people should govern themselves. In modern democracies, effective self-governance requires people to vote for candidates who share their values and against those who fail to live up to their expectations. Are voters up to this task? Decades of research suggests that people are blinded by their partisan attachments, making them more… READ MORE

COLLOQUIUM

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Nils Köbis

University of Amsterdam

 

Date: Monday, 23^rd April 2018 (NEW DATE)

Time: 12:30 PM
Venue: CESS Seminar Room (3 George Street Mews, Oxford, OX1 2AA).
Title: “A Market for Honesty”
Abstract: In the education sector, corruption is a major problem in large parts of Africa, Asia and South-America. Teachers often accept bribes from students who receive diplomas without serious effort. Students face a social dilemma: from the individual’s perspective, it is attractive to offer a bribe. If all students offer a bribe however, the diploma becomes worthless. In this paper, we… READ MORE

SEMINAR

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Guy Grossman

University of Pennsylvania

 

Date: 19^th March 2018

Time: 2:00 PM
Venue: Butler Room – Nuffield College
Title: “Crowdsourcing Accountability: ICT for Service Delivery”
Abstract: We examine the effect on service delivery outcomes of a new information communication technology (ICT) platform that allows citizens to send free and anonymous messages to local government officials, thus reducing the cost and increasing the efficiency of communication about public services. In particular, we use a field experiment to assess the extent to which the… READ MORE

COLLOQUIUM

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Lala Muradova Huseynova

KU Leuven

 

Date: 27^th February 2018

Time: 2:00 PM
Venue: CESS Seminar Room (3 George Street Mews, Oxford, OX1 2AA).
Title: “Public Opinion, Autocratic Characteristics, and Democracy Promotion: A Conjoint Analysis”
Abstract: Does the level of public support for democracy promotion tools (military intervention, sanctions, and aid) vary with the characteristics of potential autocratic targets? The scarce existing studies exploring the determinants of public support for democracy promotion have focused primarily on the citizens’ attitudes underpinning it and on the costs of different policy tools. The… READ MORE

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Macartan Humphreys

Columbia University and WZB Berlin

 

Date: 1^st March 2018

Time: 2:00 PM
Venue: The Butler Room, Nuffield College
Title: “Information and Political Accountability. Evidence from Seven Studies”
Abstract: This talk presents results from the multi-team Metaketa I project. Simple logic suggests that the quality of democratic performance depends on the information available to voters about the performance of politicians. Absent information on politician performance voters are limited in their ability to select effective leaders and to use the ballot box as an incentive… READ MORE

COLLOQUIUM

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David Ronayne

University of Oxford

 

Date: 20^th February 2018

Time: 2:00 PM
Venue: CESS Seminar Room (3 George Street Mews, Oxford, OX1 2AA).
Title: “When Good Advice is Ignored: The Role of Envy and Stubbornness”
Abstract: In a novel incentivized, online experiment involving 1,500 participants we find that good advice is frequently ignored. In our experiment, the rational actions were to ignore advice when it was “bad” and accept it when was “good”. However, participants chose to ignore good advice about a quarter of the time and appeared to trade-off rationality against behavioral factors. Through the… READ MORE

COLLOQUIUM

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Carlo Horz

Institute for Advanced Study in Toulouse

 

Date: 13^th February 2018

Time: 12:30 PM
Venue: CESS Seminar Room (3 George Street Mews, Oxford, OX1 2AA)
Title: “The Effect of Institutional Complexity on Citizen Perception: An Experiment”
Abstract: In order for electoral accountability to work, citizens must attribute policy successes and failures to the officeholder that was responsible for the policy. While scholars understand that complex institutions and citizens’ cognitive limitations can endanger accurate attributions, the interaction of these challenges is not well understood. When moving from simple to complex institutions… READ MORE

Date: 14^th February 2018
Time: 13:30 PM
Venue: CESS Seminar Room, 3 George Street Mews, Oxford, OX1 2AA
Title: “Justice for Sale: Political Exigency and the Rule of Law”
Abstract:How does the rule of law develop in a country? Effective legal institutions have been hypothesized to emerge from states’ long-term interests in growing tax revenue. Where political regimes are instead concerned with short-term survival, the rule of law will remain inadequate. But because of the historical nature of this process, convincing causal evidence is scarce. I refine… READ MORE

COLLOQUIUM

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Joseph Peissel

University of Oxford

 

Date: 6^th February 2018

Time: 12:30 PM (sandwiches served)
Venue: CESS Seminar Room (3 George Street Mews, Oxford, OX1 2AA).
Title: “Correcting cognitive biases through Brief Information Provision”
Abstract: This paper sets out a debiasing strategy based on Brief Information Provision (BIP), and tests its effectiveness in debiasing the Anchoring Bias, Availability Bias, Optimism Bias, and Present Bias, four of the key cognitive biases involved in the consumption of negative externalities such as… READ MORE.

COLLOQUIUM

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Peiran Jiao

University of Oxford

 

Date: 30^th January 2018.

Time: 12:30 PM
Venue: CESS Seminar Room (3 George Street Mews, Oxford, OX1 2AA).
Title: “Learning in Categories and the Attention Constraints of Investors”
Abstract: Investment based on asset categories (aka style investing) is considered a cause of major financial anomalies, such as the abnormal stock price gains of companies that changed to dotcom names during the Internet bubble without other changes in strategy. However, the reasons for this categorical behavior are unclear. In this project, we will conduct the first experimental test of… READ MORE.

Date: 31^st January 2018.
Time: 4:00 PM
Venue: Butler Room, Nuffield College.
Title: “Overreaction in Macroeconomic Expectations” (with Nicola Gennaioli, Yueran Ma, Andrei Shleifer)
Abstract: We examine the rationality of individual and consensus professional forecasts of macroeconomic and financial variables using the methodology of Coibion and Gorodnichenko (2015), which focuses on the predictability of forecast errors from earlier forecast revisions.  We document two principal findings: at the individual level, forecasters typically over-react to information, while… READ MORE.

COLLOQUIUM

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Sveinung Arnesen

University of Bergen

 

Date: 23^rd January 2018

Time: 12:30 PM (sandwiches served)
Venue: CESS Seminar Room (3 George Street Mews, Oxford, OX1 2AA).
Title: “By What Authority? Uncovering The Conditional Mandate from Referendums in EU Membership Decisions”
Abstract: A virtue of democratic decision-making procedures is that the foundations in which decisions are made are thought to enhance the legitimacy of the decision. We study the nuances of this assumption and ask under what conditions democratic decisions are seen as legitimate in the eyes of the people. Speci cally, we investigate what mandate citizens award an EU membership… READ MORE.