Economics and Psychology Event November 6th

On November 6th, we will hold a one-day session on the interaction of Economics and Psychology. Full details of this are here. All are welcome. There is no registration process but perhaps email emma.barron@ucd.ie to confirm attendance.

The current literatures in areas such as intertemporal choice, well-being, emotional decision making, experimental economics, identity, risky choice, neuroeconomics, and related areas are changing modern economics entirely and increasingly behavioural economics is being debated in core policy discussions, particularly in areas such as taxation and pensions. This session and previous sessions have attempted to gather people working in this area in Ireland and are complementary to the wider international conference on economics and psychology that takes place every year.

Speakers for the day include Professor Arie Kapteyn, who is a pioneer in the use of subjective measures in economics and, among many other things in a very distinguished career, founded CentER in Tilburg and is currently head of the Labour and Population Division at RAND. The current head of CentER, Professor Marcel Das will also present on the MESS and LISS projects, two of the largest social science projects in the world that are bringing economics and psychology together in a way that is dramatically expanding the data and measures available for researchers to look at complex economic questions.

There will also be a number of speakers from UCD, ESRI, Maynooth, UL and from other national institutions. While the day is focused around the talks, we hope that there will be a lot of discussion about the implications of behavioural economics for public policy and for regulation. I have posted previously on the topic of whether policy-makers should care about behavioural economics. Hopefully we can talk further about that on the day.

Some of the speakers may be wondering why there are 60,000 people outside the venue protesting. I have told them that behavioural economics is controversial in Ireland and to expect trouble.

7 replies on “Economics and Psychology Event November 6th”

Thanks for posting Liam,

This deserves a short ramble.

I believe there is extremely fertile ground in research at the juncture of these two disciplines – psychology and economics.

The particular area that I used to read a lot about in recent years, is sort of around the area of ‘cooperation’. Howard Rheingold published a book called smart mobs, to look at modern living and how mobile communications has impacted on the way we relate to each other.

It would be well worth it, sending on a flyer to the guys at Google or Facebook, who are really at the front line of trying to understand this.

Danah Boyd, a researcher with Microsoft, formally of Yahoo and MIT media lab does some interesting talks. I remember one talk where she described google applications, that behaved in strange and unusual ways – i.e. went viral and got really popular in countries like Brazil and India.

But the thing was, when you drilled down into the application – it was like the social structure of the country of Brazil or India was being replicated bit by bit in virtual space, in these google applications. The guys in the US, who may come from a technology background rather than a cultural studies background, weren’t very fast to pick up on this. In fact, often it was assumed to be an error or something that could not be explained.

As I said, there is rich areas for research opening up here, for psychologists involved with economics and visa versa.

I am reading Richard Dawkin’s book, The Selfish Gene at the moment. It is one of the required reading list for this kind of thing. Where many individual parts come together to form a larger collection, which may be a human being, a giraffe, a whale or a monkey. Dawkin’s book gives a very interesting way to understand huge numbers, and how they form something much larger.

@LorkanRK; No relation, just a good venue choice. Last year was in the dead of Winter in the physics hall in Maynooth with the audience sitting at the old desks where the trainee priests used to learn science. This year will be in one of the main training venues for finance professionals over the last few years, which is historic in its own way. Outside will likely be a large public sector protest. Perfect conditions really.

two things in this life you can’t “bate” the mug a tae and a good ruffle of finance heads discussing problems sets to the rocking sound to a public sector protest.

Cant wait…

There are in fact a number of interesting connection points between the two disciplines unfortunately the Psychology Society of Ireland is holding its annual conference in Wexford from the 5th to the 8th of November in wexford so you might find it difficult to get psychologists to attend

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