The purpose of grants from the Centre is to increase the focus on ethics in the subject areas of NHH among both staff and students.

You can apply for the following purposes:

• Research projects on a relevant topic
• Organisation of, or participation at, relevant seminars or conferences
• Educational initiatives on a relevant theme
• Student master theses on a relevant topic

Application deadlines and requirements

Application deadlines for researchers and PhD students are 20 May and 20 November.

For master theses, there is no specific deadline, applications are evaluated on a continuous basis, and may be submitted at any time.

Applications should be 2-3 pages long and must include:

• Project title
• Names of staff or students involved
• Abstract (100 words)
• Project description (for empirical studies, this must include a detailed explanation of the empirical design)
• Detailed budget
• For PhD and master student projects: A statement of recommendation from the supervisor must be attached

Please submit applications to ethics@nhh.no.

Funded projects

• Can voter’s beliefs about state performance be changed? An RCT in India

  Can voter’s beliefs about state performance be changed? An RCT in India

  Diwakar Kishore and Pallavi Prabhakar

  Low levels of state accountability in economic development prevents inclusive growth, particularly in low and middle income democracies. Limited availability of information among citizens is often attributed as the reason for the persistence of low state performance, reduced accountability and increasing economic inequalities. Understanding if voter’s change their beliefs about quality of governance and accordingly coordinate to improve local provision of public services, upon gaining access to related information is crucial for evaluating this claim. Through a Randomised Controlled Trial using targeted Facebook ads, we test whether low levels of information about state performance is the reason for persistence of limited state accountability and economic inequalities in India. We also propose to evaluate if greater information leads to a change in level of political engagement among citizens and make them demand greater state accountability. Our study will add to the current literature on political accountability, drivers of economic development inequality and governance.

• Honest and Fair: How Controllability and Perception of Fairness Affect Moral Behavior

  Honest and Fair: How Controllability and Perception of Fairness Affect Moral Behavior

  Joel W. Berge and Pablo Ignacio Soto-Mota

  Life is full of unfair outcomes that affect people’s well-being. Nevertheless, regardless of such outcomes, people are expected to adhere to the same moral principles. In this study, we investigate whether the perceived fairness of outcomes can affect moral behavior. Although research shows that people have preferences for honesty and fairness, little research has investigated how these preferences interact to influence moral behavior. We propose two experiments to examine how the controllability of outcomes affects fairness conceptions (link l) and whether the controllability of outcomes affects moral behavior. The contribution of this study would be to better understand how environmental factors (e.g., social mobility) affect people's sense of moral obligation to adhere to moral standards.

• The causes and consequences of visibility on sustainable consumption (master thesis)

  The causes and consequences of visibility on sustainable consumption (master thesis)

  Maren Simonsen Bjånes and Camilla Reinvik

  This master thesis will analyze the topic “the causes and consequences of visibility on sustainable consumption” through a randomized survey experiment on a representative sample of the population of Norway.

• Relative Performance and Preferences for Redistribution: A Field Experiment

  Relative Performance and Preferences for Redistribution: A Field Experiment

  Jonas P. Kaiser, Akshay Moorthy and Oda K. S. Sund

  Recently, most countries have experienced an increase in economic inequality. But whether citizens want to redistribute income depends on the source of inequality and whether individuals deserve their incomes. When attributing incomes to e.g. merit or luck, lab experiments have shown that people are strongly influenced by self-serving biases which distort the level of redistribution. We propose a lab-in-the-field experiment to test the strength of these biases. In our competitive setting, people have previous experience with both winning and losing, knowledge of their peers’ abilities, and an intrinsic motivation for performing well on the task. This project will add to the literature on redistributive preferences and self-serving biases

• Intergenerational risk sharing agreements and pension participation decisions

  Intergenerational risk sharing agreements and pension participation decisions

  André Lot, Xiaogeng Xu and Pablo Soto-Mota

  Pension systems share mortality risk of its members to ensure guaranteed lifetime income. A key variable in the design of such systems is whether the actuarial gains and losses of one cohort are shared within the same cohort or if they are transmitted to the next. Since all members in society might need a pension, deciding on one system has big implications for social welfare. Both Economic and Ethical consequences must be considered. How acceptable is that a cohort transmits their actuarial risk to others? Is individual behaviour affected by it? Our project explores these questions using laboratory experiments.

• Fairness Perception and Strategic Social Cooperation

  Fairness Perception and Strategic Social Cooperation

  Weijia Wang

  The feeling of being treated unfairly is potentially associated with negative social consequences, but identifying a causal relationship can be very difficult. Even in the existing experimental economics literature, the perception of being treated unfairly is often tangled with material inequality. Moreover, the current literature mainly focuses on the consequences of people's redistribution preference while the aspect of strategic cooperation is largely overlooked. This project uses a novel experiment to advance those two limitations of the existing literature. Specifically, our experiment design creates an environment in which subjects are identical in every other aspect, but differ in their perception of whether they have been treated advantageously, disadvantageously, or fairly. Then, we elicit subjects' decisions over various strategic cooperation games.

• Industry spillovers of ESG announcements by sovereign funds

  Industry spillovers of ESG announcements by sovereign funds

  PhD Candidate Damiano Maggi and Assistant Professor Nataliya Gerasimova, Dept. of Finance

  During the virtual edition of the 2020 Financial Research Conference hosted by NBIM, Carine Smith Ihenacho, Chief Governance Office at NBIM, announced how the fund tackles its ESG objectives when investing in public companies. In particular, Mrs. Ihenacho discussed how NBIM plans to reveal their ESG recommendations and its voting intentions prior to annual shareholders general meetings of any company in their portfolio. In this project, we want to investigate what are the spillovers of this NBIM decision to the real economy. If NBIM takes a more active role in promoting ESG best practices this could have an impact on the industry as a whole, as other companies may follow the recommendations. In addition, the early disclosure of voting intentions could help to raise awareness of other institutional investors and industry players.

• Is government contracting fair? Estimating the value of female politicians for women-owned firms

  Is government contracting fair? Estimating the value of female politicians for women-owned firms

  Assistant Professor Nataliya Gerasimova and Assistant Professor Maximilian Rohrer, Dept. of Finance

  In this paper, we investigate a product market link between female politicians and women in business. While many female politicians have vowed to support women in business due to the large gender gap in business ownership, evidence is sparse. This is complicated by the fact that causal inference is difficult. We solve this by exploiting mixed-gender U.S. House of Representative close election for causal inference, and U.S. federal government contracts as a direct link between a district representative and a contractor from the same district. Initial results suggest a positive and causal relationship. Further analysis is aimed at establishing a mechanism and welfare implications.

• #MeToo movement in corporations: More fairness for female employees at work?

  #MeToo movement in corporations: More fairness for female employees at work?

  Assistant Professor Xiang Zheng, Dept. of Accounting, Auditing and Law

  This project investigates whether firms benefit from ethical compliance when the public attention on ethical topics is high. The #MeToo movement sharply increases public attention on minority issues and thus provides an ideal setting to understand how different firms adapt to the evolving social norms. We aim to provide evidence on (1) the economic consequences of firms complying with ethical requirements and (2) whether ethical firms incur lower adaptation costs.

• The Impacts of Volunteering on Reputation: Evidence from a Distribution Game

  The Impacts of Volunteering on Reputation: Evidence from a Distribution Game

  Master students Ole Martin Wedum Davanger and Maximilian Ladwig, Dept. of Economics

   

  Previous research has given us insights into the motivation of volunteering, but there is little research about society’s view on volunteers. In our experiment, we will investigate if volunteers are rewarded in society, by conducting a distribution game. We will ask decision makers how much they volunteer and ask them to split a sum of money between two recipients, one who volunteers and one who does not volunteer. We are interested to see if decision makers will distribute more or less money to the volunteers than to the non-volunteers and if volunteering and non-volunteering decision makers distribute the money differently.