The voltage effect in behavioural economics
Why do some great ideas make it big while others fail to take off? According to leading US economist Professor John List, it comes down to a single question: Can the idea scale? Successful ideas have "high voltage": a set of characteristics that predict their ability to scale.
Drawing on his new book, The Voltage Effect and his original research, Prof List will offer fascinating insights into the realms of business, government, education, and public health, along with proven strategies for avoiding voltage ‘drop’ and for engineering voltage ‘gains’.
Behavioral Economics (BE) and lab/field experiments in the previous decades have contributed to the deepening scientific knowledge by uncovering mechanisms, producing key interventions, and estimating program effects.
This represented a logical first step, as experimentalists sought to provide deeper empirical insights and theoretical tests as part of the credibility revolution of the 1990s. Nevertheless, what has been lacking is a scientific understanding of how to make optimal use of the scientific insights generated for policy purposes.
Prof List denotes this the “scale-up” problem, which revolves around several important questions, such as: Do the BE insights we find in the petri dish scale to larger markets and settings? When we scale the BE intervention to broader and larger populations, should we expect the same level of efficacy that we observed in the small-scale setting?
If not, then what are the important threats to scalability? What can the researcher do from the beginning of their scholarly pursuit to ensure eventual scalability and avoid voltage drops?
Speaker
Professor John A. List, University of Chicago
John A. List is the Kenneth C. Griffin Distinguished Service Professor in Economics at the University of Chicago. His research focuses on combining field experiments with economic theory to deepen our understanding of economic science. Prof List has published over 200 peer-reviewed journal articles and several textbooks. He was elected a Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2011, and a Fellow of the Econometric Society in 2015. His research in behavioral economics in the field earned him the 2008 Arrow Prize for Senior Economists. List was the recipient of the 2010 Kenneth Galbraith Award and the 2012 Yrjo Jahnsson Lecture Prize. He is a current Editor of the Journal of Political Economy.
Host
Department of Economics, Monash Business School BET (Behavioral, Experimental, Theoretical) Research Group, Monash Business School.
Monash Laboratory of Experimental Economics (MonLEE), Monash Business School.
Organised by
Department of Economics
Event Details
- Date:
- 20 October 2021 at 10:00 am – 11:50 am
- Venue:
- Online
- Categories:
- Economics
Description
Why do some great ideas make it big while others fail to take off? According to leading US economist Professor John List, it comes down to a single question: Can the idea scale? Successful ideas have "high voltage": a set of characteristics that predict their ability to scale.
Drawing on his new book, The Voltage Effect and his original research, Prof List will offer fascinating insights into the realms of business, government, education, and public health, along with proven strategies for avoiding voltage ‘drop’ and for engineering voltage ‘gains’.
Behavioral Economics (BE) and lab/field experiments in the previous decades have contributed to the deepening scientific knowledge by uncovering mechanisms, producing key interventions, and estimating program effects.
This represented a logical first step, as experimentalists sought to provide deeper empirical insights and theoretical tests as part of the credibility revolution of the 1990s. Nevertheless, what has been lacking is a scientific understanding of how to make optimal use of the scientific insights generated for policy purposes.
Prof List denotes this the “scale-up” problem, which revolves around several important questions, such as: Do the BE insights we find in the petri dish scale to larger markets and settings? When we scale the BE intervention to broader and larger populations, should we expect the same level of efficacy that we observed in the small-scale setting?
If not, then what are the important threats to scalability? What can the researcher do from the beginning of their scholarly pursuit to ensure eventual scalability and avoid voltage drops?
Speaker
Professor John A. List, University of Chicago
John A. List is the Kenneth C. Griffin Distinguished Service Professor in Economics at the University of Chicago. His research focuses on combining field experiments with economic theory to deepen our understanding of economic science. Prof List has published over 200 peer-reviewed journal articles and several textbooks. He was elected a Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2011, and a Fellow of the Econometric Society in 2015. His research in behavioral economics in the field earned him the 2008 Arrow Prize for Senior Economists. List was the recipient of the 2010 Kenneth Galbraith Award and the 2012 Yrjo Jahnsson Lecture Prize. He is a current Editor of the Journal of Political Economy.
Host
Department of Economics, Monash Business School BET (Behavioral, Experimental, Theoretical) Research Group, Monash Business School.
Monash Laboratory of Experimental Economics (MonLEE), Monash Business School.
Organised by
Department of Economics