9th Annual Irish Economics, Psychology, and Policy Conference

9th Annual Irish Economics, Psychology, and Policy Conference

Queen’s University Belfast

November 25th 2016

The ninth annual one day conference on Economics and Psychology will be held on November 25th in Queen’s University Belfast, jointly organised by researchers in QUB, ESRI, Stirling and UCD. The purpose of these sessions is to develop the link between Economics, Psychology, and cognate disciplines throughout Ireland. A special theme of these events is the implications of behavioural economics for public policy. If you would like to attend, please register on the following link. There is no registration fee but we require advanced registration in order to provide access to the building etc.,

As well as the annual workshop we have developed a broader network to meet more regularly to discuss work at the intersection of economics, psychology, and policy. This has had six meet-ups so far, as well as some offshoot sessions. Anyone interested in this area is welcome to attend. A website with more details and a mailing list to sign up to is available here. There are currently 226 people signed up to the network and the events have been, at least in my view, very lively and interesting. There are several more planned for throughout 2016/2017 and we welcome suggestions.

830am – 850am: Registration

850am Welcome

9am to 10.40am: Behavioural Science and Policy Case Studies (Chair: David Comerford)

Katja Fells (RWI) “Behavioral Economics and Energy Conservation – A Systematic Review of Innovative Interventions and their Causal Effects”.
Nicole Andelic (QUB) “Debt advice is better delivered face-to-face than via telephone”.
Thomas Conway (NUIG): “Investigating the effects of the Great Recession on the mental health of Irish third-level students.”
Mark McGovern (QUB) “Disparities in Early Life Investments and Children’s Time Use”.
Cathal FitzGerald (DCU) “Surprisingly Rational? The Case of 100% Mortgages in Ireland in 2005”.

10.40am to 11am: Coffee

11am to 1pm: Measurement, Method, and Behavioural Science (Chair: Pete Lunn)

Carla Prentice (QUB): “Time Discounting as a Mediator of the Relationship between Financial Stress and Health”.
Seda Erdem (Stirling): “Discrete Choice Experiments and Behavioural Economics”.
Aine Ni Choisdealbha (ESRI) “Harnessing habitual behaviour in the laboratory: an experiment on how busy consumers respond to environmental information”.
Arkady Zgonnikov (NUIG): “Using decision space visualisations to characterise individual decision makers”.
Marek Bohacek (ESRI) “Investigating a central mechanism of economic decision making: the ability to trade-off incommensurate attributes”.
Danny Campbell (Stirling): “Discrete Choice Experiments and Behavioural Economics”.

1pm to 140pm: Lunch

140pm to 320 pm: Regulation, Policy, and Behavioural Science (Chair: Liam Delaney)

Clare Delargy (BIT): “Behavioural Insights and Public Policy”.
Michael Daly (Stirling): “Self-control, health, and public policy”.
Maureen Maloney and Alma McCarthy (NUIG): “Automatic enrolment and employee risk: An analysis using a bounded rationality framework”.
Leonhard Lades (Stirling) “Self-control, well-being, and normative measures of welfare”.
Karl Purcell and Laura Watts (IGEES). “Behavioural Economics and Irish policy”.

320pm to 330pm: Coffee

330pm to 415pm: Keynote Speaker 1: Professor Muireann Quigley (Newcastle Law School) “Libertarian Paternalism & Nudging: On Alluring Concepts and Public Policy”.

415pm to 5pm: Keynote Speaker 2: Professor Michelle Baddeley (UCL) Title TBC “Behavioural Economics and Regulation”.