We mourn the loss of Nora Szech
The team of Political Economy is deeply grieving the death of their highly esteemed chair holder, Professor Dr. Nora Szech.
Obituary
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.
Gedenkkolloquium
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
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 12th event in this workshop series will take place in Heidelberg on May 16. Hannes Rau will be pleased to give you more information.
More information
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
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 HeiKaMaX Workshop on Behavioral and Experimental Economics is jointly organized with the universities of Heidelberg and Mannheim and takes place twice a year.
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)
To the study (Restud)
In their study published in PLOS ONE, Jannis Engel and Nora Szech explored cheap excuses when shopping for fast fashion.
To the study
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
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
To the study
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
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.