Vereinsaktivitäten

Vortrag: „Norm Pluralism, Tolerance, and Social Sanctions in a Divided World: Investigating Political Polarization through an Economist’s Lens“

Eugen Dimant (University of Pennsylvania)

„Norm Pluralism, Tolerance, and Social Sanctions in a Divided World: Investigating Political Polarization through an Economist’s Lens“

Abstract: Lately, the causes and effects of political polarization have received much attention across behavioral science and related disciplines. In this talk, I’ll present how behavioral economists can advance the knowledge using innovative methods. Drawing on a series of recent studies, I aim to offer insights into the following two questions:

1. Can we develop new methods and tools to measure the existing norm-pluralism (= coexistence of possibly competing social norms) to better understand how we follow and enforce norms in polarized environments?
   This will be the core of my talk. Here, I will mostly rely on two experimental projects jointly developed with Kimbrough, Panizza & Vostroknutov, one of which introduces the method (link, preprint) and the other one validates and applies the method to various contentious topics in the U.S. (link, just out in PNAS Nexus).
2. How do political shocks (like the outcome of a close 2024 U.S. presidential election) shift the perceptions of fairness and the need for norm enforcement in social interactions?
   Here, I will briefly preview insights from a new manuscript (joint with Gelfand, Hochleitner & Sonderegger) in which we leveraged the election to study fairness and norm perceptions: link

Der Vortrag findet am Donnerstag, den 16. Juli 2026, von 14:00-15:30 s.t. im Seminarraum 02 012 (Rempartstraße 16, 2. OG) statt.

Wir freuen uns auf Ihre Teilnahme!

Vortrag: „Common Onwership and Systemic Risk in Banking“

Thomas Gehrig (Universität Wien)

„Common Onwership and Systemic Risk in Banking“

(Co-author:  M.-C. Iannino and C. Westheide)

Der Vortrag findet am Donnerstag, den 09. Juli 2026, von 14:00-15:30 s.t. im Seminarraum 02 012 (Rempartstraße 16, 2. OG) statt.

Wir freuen uns auf Ihre Teilnahme!

Vortrag: „Rotating Leadership and Coalitional Stability“

Michael Kurschilgen (FernUni Schweiz)

„Rotating Leadership and Coalitional Stability“

(Co-authors: O. Anderson, C. Kurschilgen, D. Spiro)

Abstract: Rotating leadership is prevalent in international relations. Examples include the presidencies of the EU Council, the G7, and the African Union. Why would self-interested actors take turns rather than have a permanent leader? We study this question in a repeated three-player Battle-of-the-Sexes game, where agents want to coordinate on a common action (leadership), but disagree on what is the best action to coordinate on (who should lead at any point in time). Standard subgame perfection provides no answer to the research question since it allows for many leadership arrangements, including a permanent leader, exclusive leadership, where one of the three agents is excluded from leadership, or fully rotating leadership. We show, however, that they differ in robustness to coalitional deviations. Asymmetric arrangements give disadvantaged players persistent incentives to form a breakaway coalition against the incumbent. By evenly distributing leadership opportunities, full rotation emerges as the most stable self-enforcing institution. Results from a preregistered laboratory experiment support the relevance of this mechanism also to interpersonal relations: rotations predominate when interests are highly heterogeneous, while permanent leadership arises mainly when interests are relatively aligned. Refuting predictions from inequality aversion, rotations remain predominant even when one player receives an additional choice-independent income, while strategies aimed at reducing this payoff gap remain rare. This suggests that the risk of coalitional breakdown is an important driver of why also individuals – not just nations – share decision making evenly.

Der Vortrag findet am Donnerstag, den 02. Juli 2026, von 14:00-15:30 s.t. im Seminarraum 02 012 (Rempartstraße 16, 2. OG) statt.

Wir freuen uns auf Ihre Teilnahme!