Research Seminars

Why do people sometimes give time and at other times give money? We study how this choice is linked to context-specific norms. In an experiment comparing climate and history domains, we document that volunteering is seen as more appropriate in the climate context, while no clear norm favors either form of giving in the history context. This difference is mirrored in behavior: social norms are associated with volunteering when there is a social norm for volunteering, whereas personal norms are more closely associated with behavior when shared expectations are weak. Comparing stakeholders and spectators, we find no evidence that norm perceptions reflect motivated reasoning. Together, the results indicate that social norms are associated with behavior when a shared norm is present, whereas personal norms are more relevant when it is not.

Hande Erkut is a postdoctoral researcher in the Market Behavior research unit at the WZB Berlin Social Science Center. She is interested in ethics and how it influences and is influenced by decision making across different areas of life, such as social, economic, and health. Her research uses tools from behavioral and experimental economics.

Sign up for a 1-to-1 meeting with Hande: https://is.muni.cz/tudle/jorv

Sili Zhang is an Assistant Professor of Economics at the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich (LMU). She received her PhD from the University of Zurich in 2022. Sili is a behavioral economist interested in understanding what shapes the way we see the world and its implications. Specifically, her research focuses on the role of (i) perceptions, (ii) narratives, and (iii) values in individual beliefs and economic behaviors.

Women remain persistently underrepresented in political decision‑making across the European Union, particularly in gender‑unequal countries such as post-communist Central Europe. This paper examines whether targeted digital voter mobilization can help reduce the political gender gap in a proportional representation system with (semi-)open party lists. I study “Vote for a Woman” – a bottom‑up, non‑partisan, citizen-run social media campaign in Czechia that encouraged voters to cast preferential votes for women candidates on semi-open party lists in the 2021 and 2025 Czech parliamentary elections. I employ two different types of event studies and dynamic difference‑in‑differences strategies to estimate its causal impact on voter behavior with respect to women politicians. The results show that the campaign increased the share of preferential votes cast for women candidates by 16% in the first campaign rollout in 2021 and by 30% in the second rollout in 2025. It also increased the probability of a woman to be elected by 18-27%, with an increasing effect size over time. The results in both election years are driven by voters of two specific political parties. These findings provide the first causal evidence that a citizen‑driven social media initiative can meaningfully strengthen electoral support for women, even in contexts with long‑standing gender inequalities.

Maite is a postdoctoral researcher at the Central European University and holds a PhD in Economics from the University of Zurich.  As an applied behavioral economist, she employs both lab and field experiments to uncover how misperceptions and cognitive biases shape choices and economic outcomes. In particular, I investigate barriers to optimal decision-making in the context of human capital investments and marriage market choices. 

Nick Deschacht is Associate Professor of labour economics at the Faculty of Economics and Business of KU Leuven. His research is focused on applied micro-econometrics and the political economy of labour markets. He teaches courses on labour economics, econometrics, and policy evaluation methods.

Jean-Robert Tyran is a Professor of Economics at the University of Vienna and director of the Vienna Center for Experimental Economics (VCEE). His research interests are broad, spanning topics in Political Economy and Public Economics. More generally, he explores how institutions -- such as markets and democracy -- are shaped by bounded rationality and social preferences. According to IDEAS/RePEc, his work primarily falls within the following fields: Experimental Economics, Cognitive and Behavioral Economics, Collective Decision-Making, Positive Political Economics, Social Norms and Social Capital, Public Economics. 

Simeon Schudy is an economist employed as a Full Professor at Ulm University and fellow of the CESifo research network. Previously, he was employed as Professor for Behavioral and Experimental Economics at LMU Munich, and worked as postdoctoral researcher at the Thurgau Institute of Economics and the University of Konstanz. His research covers topics from Labor and Organizational Economics, Political Economy, Environmental Economics, and Economic Decision-Making, more generally. 

Levent Neyse is a behavioral economist studying how people make economic and social decisions. His research uses surveys and experiments to explore preferences, beliefs, and decision-making processes. He also works on meta-scientific topics such as replicability and research transparency.  He leads the SOEP Innovation Sample at DIW, Berlin, and he is the co-PI of the Lab^2 metascience lab, based at WZB, Berlin. He serves as an associate editor at the Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics. He is a guest researcher at the London School of Economics (Department of Psychological and Behavioural Science).