Master of Science in Quantitative Decision Making in Economics and Management,
Specialization Economic Behaviour & Strategy
6 ECTS
Instructor: Florian Hett, Julian Detemple, Markus Eyting | coordination of the course: Florian Hett
First session: Wednesday, 23 April 2025, 09.00 h, Rote Infobox
In this seminar, we want to get closer to the actual research frontier in economic behavior and strategy. Students will be assigned one of the main research areas of the chair and get the opportunity to develop and carry out a related comprehensive project. The concrete format ranges from advanced literature reviews to the analysis of existing or the collection of primary data.
To pass the seminar students need to be present at all meetings, hand in a seminar paper, and give a final presentation.
Topics
“Behavioral Measurement”: The use of incentivized economic experiments to measure individual references nd beliefs. Here the “Behavioral Measurement Toolbox” (BMT) (https://bmt-01.zdv.uni-mainz.de/) may be used. Applications looking at naturally occurring (big) data are also possible.
“Social Identity”: What is the economic relevance of how people perceive themselves through their membership in social groups? Applications include political polarization, identity as a choice, and/or identity and belief formation.
“(Behavioral) Household Finance”: Why do people make bad financial choices? What are the underlying mechanisms? What are ways to mitigate them?
“Economics of Discrimination”: How and why do people discriminate and what are the con-sequences of discriminatory behavior?
“Sustainable Finance”: What is the economics of “green investing”? What are the motives and mental models underlying it
"Organizational Economics": What is organizational culture, how can it be quantified, and how does it mediate the influence of complex incentive structures? What is the role of behavioral biases in managerial decision-making and firm governance?