The Choice Lab receives 10 mill NOK

tungodden and cappelen
The Choice Lab professors Bertil Tungodden and Alexander W. Cappelen have good reason to celebrate, receiving 10 mill NOK for a research project called "Understanding Paternalisme". Stock photo: Siv Dolmen
By Sigrid Folkestad

14 December 2016 16:54

(updated: 14 December 2016 18:41)

The Choice Lab receives 10 mill NOK

The Choice Lab professors Alexander W. Cappelen and Bertil Tungodden have been awarded a research grant – of 10 mill NOK – for their project «Understanding Paternalism».

Professor Alexander W. Cappelen, The Choice Lab, NHH.
Professor Alexander W. Cappelen, The Choice Lab, NHH.

The research grant is from the FRIPRO programme of the Research Council of Norway.

The research project will be managed by the research group The Choice Lab at the Norwegian School of Economics, which is one of the leading research groups in behavioral and experimental economics, and hosted by the Centre for applied research at the NHH (SNF), which is the contract research institute in the NHH-Group.

The core research group will be headed by Professor Alexander W. Cappelen and also include Professor Marit Skivenes (UiB) and Bertil Tungodden.

Professor Bertil Tungodden, The Choice Lab, NHH.
Professor Bertil Tungodden, The Choice Lab, NHH.
Professor Marit Skivenes, University of Bergen.
Professor Marit Skivenes, University of Bergen.

Skivenes was newly awarded the prestigous ERC Consolidator Grant for her research project DISCRETION.

The Choice Lab´s major research grants:

2014: Toppforsk Grant from the Research Council of Norway (Research project: Fair inequality and personal responsibility: The nature of inequality acceptance. 22 mill NOK).

2014: Research Grant from NORFACE (Research project: Fairness, personal responsibility and the welfare state, joint project leader with Alexander W. Cappelen. 1.5 mill Euro).

 2014: Research Grant from the Kavli Foundation (Research project: Girls’ Economic Empowerment -The Best Contraceptive? 0. 8 mill NOK)

2013: Research Grant from Peder Sather Center for Advanced Study (Research project: Behavioral Economics Collaboration Project. 0. 05 mill USD, joint project leader with Shachar Kariv)

2012: Research Grant from the Norwegian Research Council (Research project: Girls’ Economic Em-powerment - The Best Contraceptive? 3 mill NOK).

2010: Research Grant from the Norwegian Research Council (Research project: On the Mechanics of Microfinance, joint project leader with Kjetil Bjorvatn. 9. 7 mill NOK).

The aim is to provide novel insights into the nature of paternalism, by examining people's willingness to restrict the freedom of others in large-scale incentivized and non-incentivized experiments.

The study is divided in three main parts:

  • In the first part of research project, they will study the nature of paternalism, with a focus on which factors that causally determines paternalistic behavior. This part consists of two sets of studies, that examines paternalism in a person’s best interest and paternalism for the common good, respectively.

     

  • In the second part of this research project, the team will examine paternalistic behavior in hierarchical relationships, with a focus on parents and children and paternalism in particular professions. Parents and professionals working with children – teachers, nurses, child welfare workers to name a few – are obligated to act and make decisions in the best interest of the child. However, they are equally obligated to respect the child’s view, and to ensure that this view is given due weight in accordance with the age, maturity and competence of the child. This balancing act is at the heart of paternalism in practice, and raises numerous themes that will be studied in two sets of experiments in this part.

     

  • In the third part of this research project, the researchers will conduct a novel large-scale international study of paternalism in 20 countries, which will provide unique evidence of how paternalistic behavior varies across cultures and institutional frameworks.

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