Welcome to the Chair of Political Economy (ECON)

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In Memoriam

ESA the Economic Science Association, VfS Verein für Socialpolitk, and WZB Wissenschaftszentrum Berlin für Sozialforschung (Berlin Social Science Center) remember Nora Szech as colleague, member, and fellow.

HeiKaMaX-Workshop
HeiKaMaxY Workshop for Young Researchers

The HeiKaMaxY Workshop for Young Researchers is a periodic workshop on Behavioral Economics and Experiments for young researchers, jointly organized with the universities of Heidelberg and Mannheim. The next event will take place at the KIT in Karlsruhe on March 1, 2024. Hannes Rau will be pleased to give you more information.

Econ Finance Workshop
Workshop on Economics, Finance and Statistics

The Workshop on Economics, Finance and Statistics is designed to cover topics of broad interest, and to offer a forum for exchange about recent research.

To the workshop
Brown Bag Seminar
Brown Bag Seminar

You are welcome to join Brown Bag seminar series on Wednesdays at 11:30. The dates and details about the presentations you can find in the link below.

 

 

 

 

Learn more!
The (In)Elasticity of Moral Ignorance
Look away and cash in?

A great many people prefer to look the other way when it comes to a donation situation, this is shown in this study by Marta Serra-Garcia and Nora Szech. However, as little as 10 cents reward can persuade half of these people to look into the donation opportunity after all - and possibly donate if necessary! The study is published as a featured paper in the top journal Management Science and presented on the Management Science Review Blog.

To the study
Manager
Female managers pay fairer wages

The research paper by Nora Szech, Leonie Kühl and David Huber investigates the question of appropriate remuneration of work. "Our study shows that the respective incentive system, work experience, and especially gender have an influence on what wages managers set for their employees" explained Nora Szech.   

Bloomberg, Spiegel OnlineBusiness Insider.com, Financial Post, FortuneBusiness Insider.jpHaufe

To the study
Tie-Breaks and Bid-Caps

In case of equal suitability, some candidates are preferred. This is often the case, for example, with disabled applicants. In sports, too, there are sometimes rules in favor of teams or candidates who may have had a more difficult time. For example, an away goal may be worth more than a goal scored at home. Or the lighter athlete wins in the event of a stalemate in weightlifting. What do such rules do for competition? Nora Szech showed in model-theoretical analyses that especially somewhat weaker candidates are spurred on by this. The whole competition can become more motivated and committed. The study was awarded the Reinhard Selten Award in 2011. Now empirical studies by Nora Szech with Aniol Llorente-Saguer and Roman Sheremeta prove this motivating effect.

To the study
Research-KIT
Diffusion of Moral Responsibility

 

The top journal The Review of Economic Studies published Nora Szech's study on the diffusion of morality in groups and voting as a featured paper.

 

Frankfurter Allgemeine FAZ (Article)

Interview with the SZ (Video)

 

To the study (Restud)
CwiC
Unsettled by Certainty?

The Chair of Political Economy co-hosted a symposium in June 2022 as part of the BMBF-funded interdisciplinary research project Coping with Certainty where "normative challenges of AI generated prediction“ were discussed with colleagues from Legal and Ethical sciences.

Publications:
Easing Restrictions During Vaccine Scarcity. How Mitigation Measures Help Tackling Associated Moral and Behavioral Challenges
Limiting medical certainties? Funding challenges for German and comparable public healthcare systems due to AI prediction and how to address them

For more information
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Money or Life?

Make profit or kill a mouse, or better do without the money and save the mouse? Individually, the majority decides in favor of the mouse’s life. But it is completely different in group decisions, where moral responsibility is shared and diffused. Nora Szech’s behavioral study was published in the top journal Review of Economic Studies.

More about the study
Research-KIT
Is "a little good" good enough?

In their study published in PLOS ONE, Jannis Engel and Nora Szech explored cheap excuses when shopping for fast fashion.

Daily news

n-tv

Helmholtz

FAZ

To the study
Fakultätslehrpreisprivat
Faculty Award 2022

During the KIT anniversary celebration on May 17, the 2022 Fakultätslehrpreise were presented. Prof. Nora Szech and her team were awarded for their varied, research-oriented and particularly interactive digital teaching program. Despite the interactive concept, Szech's team has managed to deal with the difficult situation around Corona very well, so that the teaching did not suffer at all under the conditions. 

KIT
KD2School - Decision & Design

As a publicly-funded and non-profit organisation, our interdisciplinary graduate school KD²School trains the next generation of scholars to develop adaptive systems that support economic decision-making.

One of our PhD students is part of the program with our research focus on adaptive systems, AI, and morals.

More research updates and information on upcoming events can be found here.

Directly to the KD2 School
HeiKaMaX-Workshop
HeiKaMaX Workshop

The HeiKaMaX Workshop on Behavioral and Experimental Economics is jointly organized with the universities of Heidelberg and Mannheim and takes place twice a year. The last meeting took place on December 1, 2023 in Mannheim.