Behavioural economics
Other research areas
Fairness and the Moral Mind
Project manager: BERTIL TUNGODDEN
Project Period: 2018 - 2024
The project provides a comprehensive and groundbreaking approach to the analysis of the moral mind and inequality acceptance. The studies will provide novel insights on the distributive behavior of nationally representative samples of adults and children and on the cultural transmission of moral preferences in society. The project is rooted in behavioral and experimental economics, but will also draw on insights from other social sciences and philosophy. Taken together, the project represents a unique study of inequality acceptance in the social sciences that will address an important knowledge gap in the literature on inequality.
Freedom to choose (FREE)
Project Managers: Alexander W. Cappelen and Hallgeir Sjåstad
Project period: 2022-2028
The idea that people should be free to choose and should be held accountable for the choices they make is fundamental in the modern world. In fact, the notion of individual freedom and personal responsibility is pervasive in almost all aspects of society, from political discourse to everyday life. The project "Freedom to Choose/FREE" creates a unique platform for interdisciplinary experimental research on perceptions of free choice, and how the consideration of freedom of choice influences behavior and political attitudes.
Fairness aCROSS THE WORLD
Project manager: BERTIL TUNGODDEN
Project Period: 2017 - 2018
Inequality and personal responsibility: The nature of inequality acceptance
Project manager: BERTIL TUNGODDEN
Project Period: 2016 - 2021
The project will address the following fundamental research question: What explains inequality acceptance? This question will be studied from different perspectives and by the use of a number of empirical approaches, including novel incentivized experiments on nationally representative populations, lab experiments, survey experiments, and functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). It is a truly multidisciplinary project that aims at groundbreaking research.
The welfare state and fairness in markets
Project manager: Alexander W. Cappelen
Project Period: 2016 - 2018
Almost all developed economies combine a market economy with a welfare state. Two essential roles of the welfare state are to handle inequalities created in markets and to provide insurance for market risks faced by individuals. The sustainability of the welfare state depends critically on its ability to fulfill these roles and to handle the potential trade-off between fairness and efficiency. The research project aims to provide new knowledge about how people perceive fairness in a market setting and what is seen as legitimate ways for the welfare state to respond to inequalities and risks in a market economy.
Understanding Paternalism
Project manager: ALEXANDER W. CAPPELEN
Project Period: 2017 - 2021
The proposed research project will conduct the first ever experiments to systematically examine how people make choices in situations where there is a trade-off between a person's freedom and autonomy and other moral values. The project takes a broader approach to paternalism than the existing literature, by moving beyond the focus of paternalism as being a feature of a hierarchical relationship, between the state and the citizen or between the parent and the child, to also study the nature of paternalistic behavior in nonhierarchical relationships.