Summer Institute in Behavioral Economics

Foto © Massimo Sturnega

From Sunday June 27 to Thursday July 8, 2010, the Russell Sage Foundation will sponsor the ninth Summer Institute in Behavioral Economics with the collaboration of the Department of Economics of the University of Trento, to be held in Trento, Italy. The purpose of this workshop is to introduce graduate students and beginning faculty in economics and related disciplines to the findings and methods of behavioral economics–the application of psychological theory and research to economics. The workshop will include topics on psychological foundations such as decision-making under risk and uncertainty, intertemporal choice, biases in judgment, mental accounting, and social preferences, as well as the implications of these foundations for savings behavior, labor markets, development economics, finance, public policy, and other economic topics.

The co-organizers of the Summer Institute are David Laibson, Luigi Mittone, and Matthew Rabin. The principal faculty, in attendance for the full program, are David Laibson and Matthew Rabin. Visiting faculty include Colin Camerer, Esther Duflo, Ernst Fehr, Sendhil Mullainathan, Eldar Shafir, Andrei Shleifer, and Richard Thaler.

The schedule will include sessions broadly outlining psychological foundations of different economic topics, seminars presenting recent research papers applying psychology to economics, and opportunities for students to discuss their ideas and research with the organizers, visiting faculty, and other participants.