News | Professorship of Economics with a focus on Behavioural and Digital Economics

New publication in PNAS

Field and survey experiment shows that households hardly responded to individual economic incentives in the energy crisis

The research article entitled “Household reduction of gas consumption in the energy crisis is not explained by individual economic incentives” by Markus Dertwinkel-Kalt, Christoph Feldhaus, Axel Ockenfels and Matthias Sutter has been accepted for publication in the prestigious Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS). The study examines the effectiveness of political and economic measures to reduce gas consumption during the 2022/23 energy crisis.

Article “What Drives Demand for Loot Boxes? An Experimental Study” has been accepted for publication in the Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization

This study by Markus Dertwinkel-Kalt with Simon Cordes, University of Bonn, and Tobias Werner, Max Planck Institute for Human Development, examines the effects of common loot boxes and shows that they can lead to excessive spending. Loot boxes, digital lotteries with randomized rewards often used in video games, are widely used in the gaming industry and resemble games of chance. In an experiment, we analyze the effects of two central features of loot boxes, namely censored winning probabilities and selective feedback, where only particularly good results of other players are highlighted.

Article “Skewness Preferences: Evidence from Online Poker” published in Games and Economic Behavior

We (Markus Dertwinkel-Kalt mit Dmitrij Schneider, HHU Düsseldorf, und Johannes Kasinger, Tilburg University) test various behavioral concepts such as loss aversion and preference for skewness using data from online poker games by analyzing players' choices between safe “insurance options” and risky lotteries. Our results show that players are loss averse and in particular have a strong preference for positive skewness, which contradicts the predictions of classical expected utility theory but is predicted by behavioral economic models.

Student Assistant (m/f/d) Wanted

The Chair of Economics, especially Behavioral and Digital Economics (Prof. Dr. Markus Dertwinkel-Kalt), is looking for one or more student assistants (m/f/d) with a working time of up to 15 hours per week. You can find more details here!

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Jonas Frey receives a call to the University of Gothenburg

Jonas Frey, who has been a research assistant at the Chair of Economics, especially Behavioral and Digital Economics, since 2021, has received an offer for the position of Assistant Professor at the University of Gothenburg. His research interests include Asset Pricing, Behavioral Finance, and Experimental Finance. Currently, Jonas Frey is pursuing his PhD in Finance at the University of Oxford, Saïd Business School. Congratulations to him!

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Dialogue Forum: Climate Protection and Finance (KlimFi)

At the end of February, this year's dialogue forum on the BMBF funding guideline "Climate Protection and Finance" (KlimFi) took place in Frankfurt, where all projects presented their current research results. As a cornerstone of the large project, we, the University of Münster, together with our partners from SAFE Frankfurt, Climate & Company, and Ruhr University Bochum, presented the latest findings within the framework of the project "Climlabels - Transformation Labels in Climate Finance".

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Top position in Forschungsmonitoring 2023

Prof. Dr. Markus Dertwinkel-Kalt is listed in the current research monitoring among the top young researchers in economics, more precisely at #31 in the overall ranking of young researchers and at #12 among young researchers working in Germany. The economics ranking evaluates the research performance of economists who come from or are active in German-speaking countries. The ranking list is compiled by the KOF Swiss Economic Institute at ETH Zurich. It is published every two years.

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Sustainability in Education

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Article 'Salient Cues and Complexity' accepted for publication in Management Science.

Important decisions are often complex, and previous findings suggest that complexity can influence economic decisions. However, it remains an open question as to when and how exactly complexity plays a role. We hypothesize that salient cues mitigate the effect of complexity on decisions. We derive this hypothesis theoretically from the literature and experimentally test it in the context of portfolio decisions.

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