Welcome to the Chair of Political Economy (ECON)

We are looking for student assistants:

one for more general tasks and one with a focus on coding.

The European Economic Review has published a Special Issue in memory of Nora Szech. 

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

A scientific colloquium in memory of Nora Szech was held on June 28, 2024. Renowned international academics such as Nikolaus Schweizer (Tilburg University), Thomas Mariotti (Toulouse School of Economics), Georg Weizsäcker (Humboldt University of Berlin), and George Loewenstein (Carnegie Mellon University) discussed current research.

NH

We congratulate Dr. Nicola Hüholt on the successful defense of her PhD thesis "Artificial Intelligence in Human Domains - Experimental Evidence". Nicola received her doctorate under Prof. Clemens Puppe.

LZ

Dr. Lixuan Zhao has successfully defended her PhD thesis with the Title "Three Essays in Microeconomics" under Prof. Dr. Clemens Puppe.

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

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)

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

n-tv

Helmholtz

FAZ

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.

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 Online, Business Insider.com, Financial Post, Fortune, Business Insider.jp, Haufe

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.

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

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.