Unraveling the foundations of economic behavior

At the heart of the Cen­ter is a com­mit­ment to ad­vanc­ing our un­der­stand­ing of the mech­a­nisms that dri­ve eco­nom­ic be­hav­ior and their con­se­quences for eco­nom­ic out­comes. A cen­tral fo­cus is the shared cog­ni­tive foun­da­tions of these be­hav­iors, par­tic­u­lar­ly in re­la­tion to at­ten­tion, mem­o­ry, and oth­er as­pects of in­for­ma­tion pro­cess­ing. Cog­ni­tive eco­nom­ics ex­am­ines how the de­mands placed on de­ci­sion-mak­ers — and the cog­ni­tive lim­i­ta­tions they face — shape key as­pects of eco­nom­ic be­hav­ior.

Us­ing in­no­v­a­tive method­olog­i­cal ap­proach­es and large-scale ex­per­i­men­tal and field data, we in­ves­ti­gate fun­da­men­tal ques­tions: What com­mon prin­ci­ples dri­ve hu­man be­hav­ior across eco­nom­ic con­texts? How do com­plex­i­ty and cog­ni­tive con­straints shape de­ci­sion-mak­ing and learn­ing?

We aim to fos­ter a dy­nam­ic, col­lab­o­ra­tive en­vi­ron­ment that at­tracts lead­ing schol­ars and emerg­ing re­searchers who share an ex­cite­ment for ques­tions re­lat­ed to the foun­da­tions of eco­nom­ic be­hav­ior.