FOR 1371: Design and Behaviour - Economic Engineering of Firms and Markets

经济工程学是设计现实世界的制度和机制，使个人激励和行为与潜在目标保持一致的科学。机制之所以重要，是因为它们影响激励，而决策者对激励做出反应。然而，他们并不总是以理性或自私的方式这样做；然而，行为往往以一种系统的方式做出反应。这是研究股的起点，其目的是在健全的行为研究基础上设计公司和市场的机制。标准经济理论加深了我们对抽象环境中完全理性和狭隘自利的个人之间的经济互动的理解。然而，当行为变得“人性化”、背景变得“现实”时，人们对经济结果的稳健性缺乏理解：一种在简单化假设下运作良好的机制，可能在描述性更相关的假设下失败。研究股的目标是查明和调查与更广泛的“现实世界”背景--特别是社会偏好--相关的行为复杂性，并为特定背景制定机制，证明这些机制对这种行为复杂性具有强大的抵抗力。各个项目之间存在着显著的相似之处，参与研究人员之间的合作也带来了协同效应：首先，重点是社会行为在经济工程中的作用。其次，所有项目都遵循共同的方法，将理论、实验和实地研究的互补结果紧密联系在一起。此外，研究人员共同构成了互补的和跨学科的专业知识和经验的平衡组合，这在处理现实世界的复杂性时是必要的。研究股由五个项目组成，涉及广泛的主题，如经济认知、对大型消费市场的信任以及公司内部和公司之间的激励计划的设计。

Economic engineering is the science of designing real-world institutions and mechanisms that align individual incentives and behaviour with the underlying goals. Mechanisms matter because they affect incentives, and decision makers respond to incentives. They do not always do so in a rational or selfish way, though; yet behaviour often responds in a systematic way. This is the starting point of the Research Unit, which aims at designing mechanisms in firms and markets based on sound behavioural research. Standard economic theory deepens our understanding of economic interaction of perfectly rational and narrowly self-interested individuals in abstract environments. There is, however, a lack of understanding about the robustness of economic results when behaviour becomes 'human' and the context becomes 'realistic': A mechanism that works fine under simplifying assumptions may fail under descriptively more relevant assumptions. The goal of the Research Unit is to identify and to investigate behavioural complexities that are relevant for a broader range of 'real-world' contexts - in particular social preferences -, and to develop mechanisms for specific contexts that can be proven to be robust against such behavioural complexities. There are significant similarities across projects as well as synergies from cooperation between the participating researchers: For one, the focus is on the role of social behaviours in economic engineering. Second, all projects follow a common methodological approach, tightly connecting complementary results from theory, experimental and field research. Also, together the researchers constitute the balanced mix of complementary and interdisciplinary expertise and experiences that is necessary when dealing with real-world complexities. The Research Unit is composed of five projects dealing with a broad range of topics like economic cognition, trust in large consumer markets and the design of incentive schemes within and between firms.