Date: November 20, 2025 (12:30 pm – 1:30 pm)

Speaker: Duarte Gonçalves

Paper Title: Revealing Complexity

Paper Authors: Duarte Gonçalves, Salvatore Nunnari, and Julen Zarate-Pina

Abstract: Assessing problem complexity is crucial for understanding and improving decision-making, yet reliable measures are often unavailable. This paper proposes and experimentally tests a new method to infer complexity and decision-making ability using only choice data. Based on a sequential sampling framework, this method relies on the recent theoretical insight that choices are more responsive to subsidies in more complex problems and for less able decision-makers. Across five domains—perception, computation, inference, logic, and prediction—our data validates the method and provides auxiliary evidence supporting related predictions. This method provides a portable, choice-based measure of problem complexity for researchers and practitioners across fields.

Bio: Duarte Gonçalves works on microeconomic theory and behavioural economics, with a special focus on information economics. He concluded his Ph.D. in economics at Columbia University in 2021.

Gonçalves co-organizes the UCL Centre for Theoretical and Behavioural Economics and its seminar series. He is also the director of the UCL Experimental Laboratory for Finance and Economics.