Lise Vesterlund is the Andrew W. Mellon Professor of the Department of Economics at the University of Pittsburgh and the Director of the Pittsburgh Experimental Economics Laboratory (PEEL). She is also a Research Associate with the National Bureau of Economic Research. Vesterlund works in two distinct research areas: charitable giving and gender differences in the labor market. Her work on charitable giving aims to determine why we give to charity, and on how solicitation strategies influence donations to organizations. Her research on gender sheds light on why men continue to be more successful than women in climbing the corporate ladder. She has demonstrated systematic gender differences in behavior when deciding whether to enter a competition or a negotiation or when asked to perform a non-promotable task. In uncovering the drivers of these differences her work points to mechanisms that can be put in place to secure that the best-qualified candidates are those promoted.
Spring 2019
Weekly Seminar: Yoram Halevy, “Hard-to-Interpret Signals” (with Larry Epstein)(Thursday, May 2, 2019)
Yoram Halevy is a Professor of Economics and Director of the Toronto Experimental Economics Lab (TEEL) at the Department of Economics, University of Toronto. Yoram’s research interests are individual and strategic decision making, which he studies using theoretical and experimental tools. He is particularly interested in what constitutes “rational” behavior, and investigating how (bounded) rationality can be revealed in various environments.
Weekly Seminar: Rachel Kranton, “Deconstructing Group Bias” (Thursday, April 18, 2019)
Rachel Kranton is the James B. Duke Professor of Economics at Duke University. She studies how institutions and the social setting affect economic outcomes. She develops theories of networks and has introduced identity into economic thinking. This current project engages experimental research on identity and economic behavior and uncovers individual predilections to respond to group settings. She earned her Ph.D. in Economics at the University California, Berkeley and has held fellowships at the Russell Sage Foundation in New York and the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton.
Weekly Seminar: Olivier Armantier, “Overcoming Discount Window Stigma: An Experimental Investigation” (With Charles Holt) (Thursday, April 11, 2019)
Olivier Armantier (Ph.D.) is an expert in the field of Applied Econometrics, with special emphasis on structural models. Professor Armantier has applied these estimation techniques to a wide range of economic topics. His most significant contributions have been to the fields of Auctions, Experimental Economics, Industrial Organization, and Game Theory. In particular, Armantier has been working with the French and Canadian Treasuries to determine the best payment mechanism to sell government securities at Treasury auctions. Professor Armantier has also estimated complex structural models of incomplete information for the airlines and pharmaceutical industries. Finally, Armantier has conducted a number of experiments, to analyze the behavioral foundations of economic activities. The structural estimation of these experimental data has enabled him to uncover new phenomenon related to learning, fairness and the perception of risks. Professor Armantier started his career at SUNY Stony Brook before moving to the Université de Montréal. He is now an Assistant Vice President at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.
Weekly Seminar: Charles Noussair, “Sequential Search with a Price Freeze Option: Theory and Experimental Evidence” (Thursday, April 4, 2019)
Charles Noussair is the Eller Professor of Economics and the Director of the Economic Science Laboratory at the University of Arizona. He is a co-editor at the journal Experimental Economics and serves on a number of editorial boards. He holds a B.A. from the University of Pennsylvania and M.S. and Ph.D. degrees from the California Institute of Technology. His specialties are experimental economics and finance.
Weekly Seminar: Johanna Mollerstrom, “A Meritocratic Origin of Egalitarian Behavior” (Thursday, March 28, 2019)
Johanna Mollerstrom is Associate Professor of Economics at George Mason University and received her PhD in Economics from Harvard University in 2013. Her main research area is experimental and public Economics and she is especially interested in questions related to demand for redistribution, social preferences, and gender. In addition to being in academia, she has a past as an elected politician in her home country Sweden.