Market Design for the Reallocation of Land. This fellowship uses laboratory and lab-in-the-field experiments to explores how market design can be used to develop combinatorial exchanges that allow participants to exchange packages of land. Allowing for package bids can facilitate trade in situations where owning one piece of land increases the value of adjacent land and where assembling contiguous pieces of land is important. Combinatorial exchanges have the potential to increase the productivit ....Market Design for the Reallocation of Land. This fellowship uses laboratory and lab-in-the-field experiments to explores how market design can be used to develop combinatorial exchanges that allow participants to exchange packages of land. Allowing for package bids can facilitate trade in situations where owning one piece of land increases the value of adjacent land and where assembling contiguous pieces of land is important. Combinatorial exchanges have the potential to increase the productivity of agriculture land in both Australia and developing countries, encourage urban redevelopment, and help the government secure land for infrastructure and environmental protection in a cost-effective way.Read moreRead less
The rate of time preference in choice experiments: A systematic re-analysis. This project intends to re-analyse data from over 20 years of past research to understand when and why people sometimes make short-sighted choices. Time preference is a core concept in both theoretical and applied economics and a key input in public policy, yet empirical understanding of it is poor. Almost all important decisions of households, businesses and government involve benefits and costs that unfold over time. ....The rate of time preference in choice experiments: A systematic re-analysis. This project intends to re-analyse data from over 20 years of past research to understand when and why people sometimes make short-sighted choices. Time preference is a core concept in both theoretical and applied economics and a key input in public policy, yet empirical understanding of it is poor. Almost all important decisions of households, businesses and government involve benefits and costs that unfold over time. Many economists have used decision-making experiments to study how people value the future and make trade-offs over time, but these have not reached any clear consensus. This project plans to systematically re-analyse primary data using state-of-the-art estimation techniques to generate new estimates of the discount rate for each study. These will then be analysed in a meta-regression analysis to identify the factors that cause discount rates to vary between studies.Read moreRead less
Posted prices, bargaining and auctions: an experimental examination. This project uses economic methods to investigate how trading institutions affect prices and efficiency. It examines markets with directed search: buyers visit sellers based on any information they have. Simultaneous buyer choices and sellers’ capacity constraints lead to “frictions” where not all profitable exchanges occur - more realistic than the usual “frictionless” assumption. The project will vary: whether sellers can pos ....Posted prices, bargaining and auctions: an experimental examination. This project uses economic methods to investigate how trading institutions affect prices and efficiency. It examines markets with directed search: buyers visit sellers based on any information they have. Simultaneous buyer choices and sellers’ capacity constraints lead to “frictions” where not all profitable exchanges occur - more realistic than the usual “frictionless” assumption. The project will vary: whether sellers can post prices in advance; and, whether and how negotiation occurs based on how many buyers (one vs two or more) visit a seller. The project will use results from auction, bargaining, game and search theories, and new analysis, to form predictions, which will be tested using experiments. The results should have implications for labour and competition policies.Read moreRead less
Voter behaviour and polarisation: The role of social preferences. This project aims to investigate how peer pressure and other social concerns affect voter participation, vote choice, and political polarisation. It will marry behavioural experimental economics with political economics and make use of complementary experimental methods that will allow for the study of carefully controlled elections, followed by a large-scale real-world test of the results. Expected outcomes include improved under ....Voter behaviour and polarisation: The role of social preferences. This project aims to investigate how peer pressure and other social concerns affect voter participation, vote choice, and political polarisation. It will marry behavioural experimental economics with political economics and make use of complementary experimental methods that will allow for the study of carefully controlled elections, followed by a large-scale real-world test of the results. Expected outcomes include improved understanding of how social media and other social factors, and political institutions such as compulsory voting, distort election representation and outcomes. Major benefits include the ability to advise policies to reduce polarisation and improve political institutions to ensure they reflect true societal preferences.Read moreRead less
The effect of bargaining power on bargaining outcomes: the roles of institutions, earned bargaining position and social norms. Previous research has found that people exploit their bargaining power far less than economic theories predict. This project uses an economics experiment to study several factors affecting how bargaining power is used: restrictions on the bargaining process; whether and how bargaining power is 'earned' and whether equal divisions are plausible.
Discovery Early Career Researcher Award - Grant ID: DE190100585
Funder
Australian Research Council
Funding Amount
$370,000.00
Summary
Women, task allocations, and advancement in the labour market. This project aims to investigate the origins and labour market consequences of gender differences in willingness to perform low-promotability tasks. The design of practices and institutions that can close gender gaps in the labour market and promote the advancement of the highest quality workforce in organisations requires information about the factors that affect career advancement. This project will study the allocation of tasks th ....Women, task allocations, and advancement in the labour market. This project aims to investigate the origins and labour market consequences of gender differences in willingness to perform low-promotability tasks. The design of practices and institutions that can close gender gaps in the labour market and promote the advancement of the highest quality workforce in organisations requires information about the factors that affect career advancement. This project will study the allocation of tasks that do not enhance prospects for promotion. The project will provide new insights regarding how organisations and the government can design programs to reduce the under-representation of women in leadership positions and in traditionally male-dominated fields.Read moreRead less
Economics of Biased Beliefs: Implications for Diversity Gaps in Workplaces. By developing state-of-the-art experimental and behavioural methodologies to study biased belief formation, this project aims to improve our understanding of the factors contributing to diversity gaps in labour market outcomes in Australia. The project investigates biases in the beliefs formed about the performance of women and minorities, and how these biases can be reduced through policy interventions and improved orga ....Economics of Biased Beliefs: Implications for Diversity Gaps in Workplaces. By developing state-of-the-art experimental and behavioural methodologies to study biased belief formation, this project aims to improve our understanding of the factors contributing to diversity gaps in labour market outcomes in Australia. The project investigates biases in the beliefs formed about the performance of women and minorities, and how these biases can be reduced through policy interventions and improved organisational structures. Expected outcomes include informing policy makers of appropriate interventions and expanding scholarly knowledge of the economic impact of discrimination. The insights gained will enhance Australia’s economic performance by improving workplace diversity and dynamics.Read moreRead less
Information acquisition and voting behaviour. This project aims to understand citizens’ decisions to acquire information about different policy proposals within a democracy and how such information affects their voting behaviour. Proper democracies rely on the informed participation of their citizens in the political debate and political institutions. The project intends to provide formal theories of information acquisition together with empirical evidence on how voting decisions are shaped by t ....Information acquisition and voting behaviour. This project aims to understand citizens’ decisions to acquire information about different policy proposals within a democracy and how such information affects their voting behaviour. Proper democracies rely on the informed participation of their citizens in the political debate and political institutions. The project intends to provide formal theories of information acquisition together with empirical evidence on how voting decisions are shaped by the quantity and quality of information. Understanding how citizens decide to acquire information would help devise policies to reduce polarisation and improve the quality of the political debate and the democracy.Read moreRead less
Designing for uncertainty in conservation auctions. Economic theory and case study evidence show that tenders or auctions are more efficient than grant mechanisms for encouraging landholders to produce environmental outcomes on private land. These studies have ignored the effects of uncertainty of both bidders and administrators about factors such as landholder participation and the level of environmental benefits that will be delivered. This project will test whether distributing environmental ....Designing for uncertainty in conservation auctions. Economic theory and case study evidence show that tenders or auctions are more efficient than grant mechanisms for encouraging landholders to produce environmental outcomes on private land. These studies have ignored the effects of uncertainty of both bidders and administrators about factors such as landholder participation and the level of environmental benefits that will be delivered. This project will test whether distributing environmental funds via tenders is still efficient when uncertainty about various important factors is considered. Results from this research are expected to inform the cost effective design of systems to pay landholders for the provision of environmental benefits even when there is high uncertainty.Read moreRead less
Discovery Early Career Researcher Award - Grant ID: DE120101270
Funder
Australian Research Council
Funding Amount
$375,000.00
Summary
The behavioural birthdate effect: the impact of relative position within cohorts on risk aversion, self-confidence and aspiration levels. The 'birthdate effect' describes the phenomenon where children born just after the school entry cut off date are more successful in life than those born just before. This project will study why these children make very different life choices, those born just after the cut-off date are expected to take greater risks and have higher self esteem.