Our Behavioral Economics Group at ESE

Mission Statement

Many pressing societal problems are behavioral in nature. To tackle them, we believe it is paramount to advance our understanding of human behavior and the factors that shape it. With our research, we hope to effectively help people make smarter decisions in complex environments.

Vision

Changing one’s behavior is difficult, and there are many barriers to change. Our research is guided by insights from behavioral economics, which provides tools to identify and overcome these barriers, allowing us to design interventions to help people make better decisions.

Behaviors We Study

• Health: physical activity, sleep, lifestyle, diet, mental health
• Financial: investment, insurance, planning, organization, speculation, gambling
• Security: cyber security and workplace security
• (un)Ethical behavior: lying, cheating

Factors Shaping Behavior

• Socio-economic: income, gender, social environment
• Physiological and psychological: stress, stereotypes, cognitive capabilities, emotions
• Information and education

Methodology

• Field, laboratory, and online experiments
• Formal theory