I became a behavioural economist because of this graph: It shows that happiness remained unchanged even as income doubled. The graph is from the US but the result replicates in other developed and middle-income countries. It was discovered by Richard Easterlin in 1974 and was dubbed the Easterlin Paradox about a decade later. Easterlin died
Leo Lades and Liam Delaney gave a seminar on “Ethics as the Foundation of Applied Behavioural Science.” The recording is available on the website of the International Behavioural Public Policy Association: https://www.ibppa.org/event-details/behavioural-public-policy-seminar-1-by-liam-delaney-lse-and-leo-lades-stirling The seminar discussed the role of broad political philosophical positions (e.g., Libertarian Paternalism) as opposed to multidimensional, context-specific ethics frameworks which summarise multiple
I (Leo) had the pleasure to give a presentation at the international researcher seminar of the Ferdinant Porsche Fern FH organised by Prof Eva Hofmann. I know Eva from the Managing Committee of IAREP and was delighted that she invited my to present. They uploaded the presentation which you can watch below and also wrote
The Invisible College sounds great – a series of events in Cambridge on how to promote progress Apply to come to Invisible College – by Ben Southwood (worksinprogress.news) I also love the idea of a Science House – a residential base for people who want to spend a summer doing science for the sake of
Next Thursday Sam Enright, founder of the Edinburgh branch of the Effective Altruism movement, will be giving a talk titled “Low-Hanging Fruit in Global Health: Lessons from Lead Poisoning”. The talk is at 12.30 in 2b39 of the Cottrell Building. All welcome!
The first Scottish Behavioural Science Conference took place on Thursday, May 02, 2024 at the University of Stirling. The purpose of the conference was to develop links between behavioural scientists (e.g., from behavioural economics, social and cognitive psychology, philosophy, and related areas) throughout Scotland. For this conference, we understood behavioural science as the study of
The Enlightenment ushered in a criterion for “knowing” rooted in replicable and externally verifiable evidence. Recently there has been a call to recognize other ways of knowing, those rooted in intuition, tradition, ritual etc. The validity of “other ways of knowing” is a source of debate. A ubiquitous example of where other ways of knowing
Football managers are too frequently fired when their teams underperform. That highlights a general bias to attribute credit / blame on the basis of realized outcomes. Because realized outcomes will to some extent be a function of luck, efficiency would recommend instead attributing credit and blame on the basis of process. The football manager example
You asked – we listened. By popular demand, here is the recording of our Workshop on Behavioural Science and Digital Markets Regulation that took place on the 20th of October, 2023 at the University of Stirling. The recording is split into three parts. Part 1 contains the following: Part 2 contains the following: Part 3