The mission of the Research Priority Area Behavioral Economics (RPA-BE) is to foster research that increases our understanding of how behavioural factors impact the decisions of economic agents, including consumers, firms and financial market participants.
RPA-BE enables experimental research on a large scale
The unifying factor in the research of the RPA-BE is the extensive use of the
experimental method. This method is costly, however, e.g., due to the need to
remunerate human subjects for participation in experiments and the fixed cost of
maintaining an experimental lab that meets the international standard. Now that
Behavioural Economics is a Research Priority Area, additional resources are
available. A major added value of the RPA-BE is that it has enabled the
application of the experimental method at a scale that is needed for research of
this kind. In short, excellent laboratory research requires a sufficient scale
of research activities and interaction and the RPA-BE has made this possible.
Researchers can apply at the RPA-BE for the funds needed to run experiments,
so that they can focus on their core business. This has substantially boosted
the researchers’ productivity. A committee allocates the resources to promising
research proposals. This committee consists of Prof. dr. Theo Offerman, Prof.
dr. Erik Plug, Prof. dr. Joep Sonnemans, Prof. dr. Randolph Sloof and Prof. dr.
Jan Tuinstra.
Cooperation with top-level research groups across the world
The Research Priority Area Behavioural Economics (RPA-BE) cooperates with
top-level research groups with a similar agenda across the world. The most
intensive collaborations in Europe are with groups at the Autonoma University
Barcelona, the University of Nottingham, the University of East Anglia and
Catholic University of Milan, and in the US with New York University, the
University of Arizona, the University of California at Santa Barbara and the
University of Wisconsin. These collaborations have led to joint authorships and
an active exchange of PhD Students. In the future we intend to maintain and
expand these contacts where possible.
Annual workshops to exchange ideas with international researchers
In addition, the research RPA-BE has funded three workshops, allowing faculty
members to interact with the top-researchers in laboratory experiments
(ABEE2009), field experiments (ABEE2010), behavioural theory (ABEE2011),
behavioral industrial organization (ABEE2012) and neuroeconomics and the lab
(ABEE2013). The RPA-BE also attracted top international visitors and made it
possible to organize international PhD workshops.
Four core groups joined forces in RPA-BE
The Amsterdam School of Economics of UvA has an excellent status in the field
of Behavioral Economics. The UvA research priority area Behavioral Economics
merged four core groups. CREED, CeNDEF, the Industrial Organisation group and
the Human Capital group joined forces to become the RPA-BE. The first three were
the faculty’s three highest ranked groups at the most recent quality assessment
by the Quality Assessment Netherlands’ Universities (QANU).
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