Prof. Gaetcher visited LISER on 15/09 to provide a keynote address at the LISER-LAB Inaugural Workshop. The keynote lecture was entitled “Revealing the Economic Consequences of Group Cohesion” (co-authored with Chris Starmer and Fabio Tufano). The event focused on research in behavioural and experimental economics, with presentations on social norms, cooperation and digitalization.

Currently a professor of Psychology of Economic Decision Making at the University of Nottingham, Prof. Gaechter is an expert in human cooperation, with publications in top journals such as Science, Nature, Econometrica and the American Economic Review. He recently completed an ERC grant investigating how incentives, social and cultural context, and gender and personality differences, shape strong reciprocity and, as a consequence, cooperation.

LISER sat down with Prof. Gaechter to learn more about the burgeoning field of behavioral and experimental economics.

Q: You are considered a world-renowned expert in behavioral and experimental economics. How would you describe this area of study?
A: “I think it is the study of real human behaviour under controlled conditions. It uses incentives to understand motivated behaviour in a way that can be translated/related to economic ways of thinking. It is about data and empirical observations rather than just theorising about peoples’ behaviours. We observe them under controlled conditions that allows causal inference about what-causes-what, like in the typical scientific method.”

Q: You have received you PhD in Economics in Vienna. Have you been interested in behavioural economics since then?
A: “I have, I started my first experiment when I was doing my PhD even though the experiment was not part of my PhD. Back then experimental economics was very novel and very few people did it. As a research assistant on a research grant that Ernst Fehr spearheaded, I have been fascinated ever since and behavioural economics has become my specialty.”

Q: In your opinion, how advanced do you think are scientists’ comprehension of human cooperation?
A: “I think we have made great progress through the experimental methods. We have some reliable and replicable data from across the world and many different institutions. There is an accumulating body of evidence that is so interdisciplinary that I think has allowed us to gain some great insight into what motivates people and human cooperation. I am captivated by the level of interdisciplinary as it is of interest in psychology, biology, economics, political science and sociology to some extent. We are all using experimental methods from our specific angle of investigation but together I think we have learned quite a lot over the last twenty years but there are many more aspects to be explored.”

Q: Since the famous paper in AER on public good with punishment you have conducted a lot of prominent research in understanding how norms shape our societies. What do you think is the main lesson we can learn from this area of research?
A: “The main message is that people are not selfish and are willing to cooperate if others are willing to pull their weight. People get upset and are willing to incur some costs to punish others freeloading on them. This type of moralistic aggression or sentiment against people who exploit others is something we find everywhere we do these experiments and we have done them in 43 countries or so. We also find that people are “conditional cooperators”, meaning they are willing to pull their weight for the collective good if others pull their weight too.”