Past Meetings

May 7th, 2025 (11:30-12:30, Seminar Room)

• Veronica Rattini: "Gender Differences in Job Search: the Role of Information and Social Learning"

• Marco Fabbri: "Dominicans and Franciscans' influence on cultural values: guilt vs. shame-based moral enforcement" (brainstorming for the project funded by the Templeton Foundation 2024 SPARRC Seed Grant "Mendicant Orders in Western Society")

April 8th, 2025 (14:00-15:00, Seminar Room)

•  Marco Fabbri: "Slaves descendants and the market for kidney: a randomized survey" (Marco Fabbri (UNIBO), Nicola Lacetera (UNIBO), Plinio Limata (LUMSA))

• Organizational meeting on BLESS/POOLPO transition

March 6th,  2025 (15.00-16.00, Meeting Room 1)

•  Stefano Piasenti: "Debunking Myths: Ancestral Narratives and social cohesion in India"

•  Alessandro Salis: "Individual Responsibility and Social Expectations: an Experiment on Exploiting and Restoring the Environment"

February 3rd, 2025 (11.00-12.00, Seminar Room)

• Natalia Montinari: "Should I Work Part-Time? Exploring Personal Preferences and Societal Expectations Using the LISS Dataset in the Netherlands" (Simona Cicognani (Leiden University) and Natalia Montinari (University of Bologna))

November 7th, 2024 (11:00-12:00, Auditorium, Piazza Scaravilli 2)

•   Nicola Lacetera: "Save and Let Die? Economic Factors and the Support of Medically Assistance in Dying" (Nicola Lacetera, Florian Schneider, Roberto Weber)

Abstract: 

The ethics and legalization of Medical Aid in Dying (MAiD)—the act of a person intentionally ending his or her life with help of a health-care practitioner—are a source of considerable debate in health policy and medicine. The legal status varies considerably across countries and circumstances. The variation in whether MAiD is legally permissible, even between countries that are similar in their culture and political systems, suggests that the voluntary termination of one’s life with the aid of a medical professional is a highly contentious issue. We study the relative importance that people assign to “economic” and non-economic factors, including ethical and moral factors. People weigh costs against benefits in many choice contexts and in their policy preferences; it remains uncertain, however, whether they are willing to do so in certain domains of health where “sacred values” that preclude trade‐offs may be concerned, including decisions involving life and death. We consider the impact of two different types of economic factors on support for MAiD. First, we study whether the impact of granting MAiD on public resources influences the degree to which individuals support it. Second, we investigate whether individuals weigh the impact of financial circumstances on the well-being of a patient seeking MAiD.

October 2nd,  2024 (11:00-12:00, Seminar Room, Piazza Scaravilli 2)

•   Maria Bigoni:  "Presentation of the PoolPo platform for nation-wide subject recruitment"

Jul. 1st (13:00 - 13:30, Seminar Room, Piazza Scaravilli 2)

• Elisabetta De Cao: “The IdealChild Database”

In preparation for my ERC Consolidator interview which will be in September, I would like to present you my idea for a new online survey called “The IdealChild Database” which includes new ways of measuring parenting attitudes across countries. My overall ERC project is called HARSH - Uncovering the roots of harsh parenting.

Monday, Jun. 3rd, 2024 (13:00 - 14:00, Seminar Room, Piazza Scaravilli 2)

• Stefania Bortolotti and Stephanie Heger: Truth discernment and the demand for fact-checking

May 6th, 2024 (13:00 - 14:00, Seminar Room, Piazza Scaravilli 2)

• Sarah Spycher: Meet me at the Threshold - Asymmetric Players in a Threshold Public Goods Game

Abstract:

     We analyse a threshold public goods game in which players have varying benefits from public goods provision, motivated by the existence of large heterogeneities between countries in international environmental cooperation. The setup chosen specifically allows for an analysis of the trade-off between efficiency and equity. We choose a preference specification allowing for a variety of other-regarding preferences and hypothesize that benefit symmetry among players facilitates coordination due to converging focal points of efficiency and equity. Increasing degrees of asymmetry lead to diverging focal points, rendering cooperation more difficult. Our theoretical predictions are supported by preliminary experimental evidence. We find that provision is most frequent when players are symmetric. While increasing the degree of asymmetry does not significantly hamper provision success, contributions become more volatile the more heterogeneous players are. Analysing how players share contribution costs, we see that the extent of asymmetry is not salient, leading to relatively constant burden-sharing across treatments despite varied levels of inequity.

Apr. 8th, 2024 (13:00 - 14:00, Seminar Room, Piazza Scaravilli 2)

• 13:00 - 14:00  Maria Bigoni: Why Don’t You Take a Leaf Out of Her Book? An Experiment on Social Search (with Michela Boldrini, Niccolò Lomys and Emanuele Tarantino )

Mar. 4th, 2024 (13:00 - 14:00, Seminar Room, Piazza Scaravilli 2)

• 13:00 - 13:30  Maria Alejandra Erazo Diaz: Transition expectations and policy uncertainty: an experimental approach 

• 13:30 - 14:00  Boris Thomas Theophile Wieczorek: Tipping on Cooperative Games

Feb. 19th, 2024 (13:00 - 14:00, Meeting Room 1 in the basement of via San Giacomo building)

• 13:00 - 14:00  Jonathan Neil Chapman: How to Elicit Preferences 

Jan. 24th, 2024 (16:00 - 17:00, the Auditorium)

• 16:00 - 16:30  Marco Fabbri: Organizing RCTs in Benin: possibilities to join the network 

• 16:30 - 17:00  Organizational meeting

Dec. 14th, 2023 (10:00 - 11:00, Seminar room)

• 10:00 - 10:45 Stephanie Heger and Stefania Bortolotti: What drives the demand for fact-checking?

• 10:45 - 11:00 Organizational meeting: Issues about the reading group and celebration  

Nov. 9th, 2023 (16:00 - 17:00, the Seminar room)

• 16:00 - 16:30 Xin Zhang: Break the Norm: An Experiment on Opinion Leaders and Homophily

• 16:30 - 17:00 Giorgio Dini:  Greenwashing and Enforcement: A Laboratory Experiment

Oct. 12th, 2023 (10:00 – 11:00, the common room in the basement of San Giacomo building)

• 10:00 – 10:30 Natalia Montinari:  "Gender Differences in Leadership: the Role of Expectations and Negotiation"

•  10:30 – 11:00 Irene Maria Buso: "Uncertainty and Fake News: an experimental study on the strategic use of fake news in belief formation"

Sept. 21st, 2023 (10:00 – 11:00, Seminar room)

• 10:00 – 10:30 Marco Casari and Filip Fidanoski:  Deciding for Others

•  10:30 – 11:00 Discussion on BLESS lab issues and the organization of the reading group in experimental/behavioral economics

Jul. 12th, 2023 (14:15 – 15:15, Seminar room)

• 14:15 – 14:45  Giorgio Dini and Damiano Paoli: “Cheating behavior and AI detection: proposal for a field experiment”

• 14:45 – 15:15  Organizational meeting (if necessary)

Jun. 7th, 2023 (14:15 - 15:15, Old Seminar room)

• 14:15 - 15:15  Organizational meeting: faculty only

May 3rd, 2023 (14:15 – 15:15), the Old Seminar Room

• 14:15 – 14:45  Antonio Schiavone (Bologna):  "Taxpayer Bias in Perceived Income Distributions" (with Daniel Diez)

  • Abstract:  This paper explores a previously undocumented relationship between the structure of the tax system and taxpayers' perceptions of their position in the income distribution. 

We develop a theoretical model that maps the information from the tax schedule onto informative signals that taxpayers use to infer their position in the income distribution. 

Using panel data from the General Social Survey, we find evidence that changes in the US federal income tax system have influenced perceptions of income ranks over the past few decades. We show that the correlation between actual and perceived rank in the income distribution seems to disappear for individuals in the zero-tax bracket.

To establish causality, we conduct an online experiment on Amazon Mechanical Turk with American workers, where we randomly assign participants to either a proportional flat tax system or a progressive tax system with increasing marginal tax rates. Our results reveal statistically significant differences between the two tax systems in terms of participants' perceived income levels and probabilities of being above the average income level. Specifically, participants facing the progressive tax system perceive an average income level that is 12% higher and a probability of being above the average income level that is 25% lower compared to those in the control group, whereas those facing the proportional tax system show no significant differences.

We run a second experiment to test whether information about social benefits and tax credits can affect income perceptions when the marginal tax rate is zero (work in progress).

These findings suggest that the design of tax schemes can generate a bias in the perception of the income distribution, which may influence support for redistributive policies.

• 14:45 – 15:15  Organizational meeting of the research group on experimental and behavioral economics

Mar. 8th, 2023 (14:15 – 15:15, New Seminar room in Piazza Scaravilli, 2)

• 14:15 – 14:45  Jonathan Neil Chapman:  Equality of Opportunity or Outcome?

• 14:45 – 15:15  Giorgio Dini: Introduction to the new procedure for using PlayStudies to pay subjects

Feb. 15th, 2023 (14:00 – 15:00, Basement room at via San Giacomo)

• 14:00 – 14:30  Marco Casari and Filip Fidanoski (Bologna):  Deciding for others

• 14:30 – 15:00  Organizational meeting: The new procedures for running experiments in lab

Dec. 5th, 2022 (14:00 – 15:00)

• 14:00 – 14:30  Marco Fabbri (Bologna):  The N effect (joint with Avishalom Tor, Notre Dame U.)

• 14:30 – 15:00  Maria Bigoni (Bologna):  Social search: an experimental study (joint with Michela Boldrini, Nicolò Lomys, and Emanuele Tarantino)

Nov. 7th, 2022 (14:00 - 15:00)

• 14:00 – 14:30  Riccardo Ghidoni (Bologna):  A Remedy to the Demand for Bad Policies (joint with Giovanni Immordino and Paolo Roberti)

• 14:30 – 15:00  Alessandro Tavoni (Bologna):  From Niches to Norms: Drivers and Diffusion of Green Social Tipping (ERC Consolidator Grant interview preparation. Format: 7 min presentation + 23 min Q&A)

Oct. 10th, 2022 (16:00 - 17:00)

• 16:00 – 16:30  Marco Casari (Bologna):  Conditional cooperation in public good games

• 16:30 – 17:00  Xin Zhang (Bologna):  Random dictatorship in two-person bargaining with incomplete information (a pretest of experiment program)

Jul. 4th, 2022 (12:00 – 13:00)

• 12:00 – 12:30  Xin Zhang (Bologna):  Two-person Bargaining with Incomplete Information: An Experiment

• 12:30 – 13:00  Marco Stimolo (Università della Campania Luigi Vanvitelli): Social Mobility, Inequality and Trust (with Francesco Parisi and Alice Guerra) - online

Jun. 6th, 2022 (12:00 - 13:00)

• 12:00 - 13:00  Ali Seyhun Saral (Bologna):  Online Experiments: Challenges and Tips

May 2nd, 2022 (1pm-2pm)

• 1 - 1.30pm. Natalia Montinari (Bologna): Gendered decision making in explore-exploit tasks.

• 1.30 - 2pm. Organizational meeting of the research group of experimental and behavioural economics (Bologna faculty members only).

January 19th, 2022 (2pm-3pm)

• 2 - 2.30pm. Natalia Montinari (Bologna): From personal gender attitudes to social norms on gender.

• 2.30 - 3pm. Organizational meeting of the research group of experimental and behavioural economics (Bologna faculty members only).

December 15th, 2021 (4pm-4,30pm)

• Marco Casari (University of Bologna): Market legitimacy in Benin

July 12, 2021 (12pm - 12,30 pm)

• Tibor Neugebauer  (University of Luxembourg):  Uncertainty and Asset Prices: Stock Market “Puzzles” observed in an Experimental Production Economy (with  Reinhard Selten & Julien Pénasse)

May 3, 2021 (12pm-1pm)

• Marco Casari & Maria Bigoni (Bologna): The Covid game: cooperation resilience after a shock of uncertain duration  (with Gabriele Camera)

• (Bologna faculty members only) Organizational meeting of the research group of experimental and behavioral economics

April 9, 2021 (3pm-4pm)

• Alice Guerra (Bologna): Vote Buying and Redistribution (with Mogens K. Justesen)

• (Bologna faculty and students only) Updates on ESA 2022, on the BLESS lab and on the website

March 1, 2021 (9am-10am)

• Marco Casari (Bologna): A public good or bad experiment with side transfers

• (Bologna faculty member only) Organizational meeting of the research group of experimental and behavioral economics

October 5, 2020 (12pm-12:30pm)

• Andrea Guido (ISTC-CNR Rome): Guilt aversion and social image concern in dictator games: the effect of observability (with Giulia Andrighetto, Maria Lapinski, Angel Sanchez)

September 7, 2020 (12pm-1pm)

• Ludovica Spinola (Ca' Foscari): On the relationship between information and social norms in affecting income tax evasion

• (Bologna faculty member only) Updates on the use of the BLESS lab in the COVID-era

April 6, 2020 (11am-12pm)

• Alessandro Castagnetti (U. Warwick): Fooling the Ego: Deception and Insufficient Skepticism

• Yuki Takahashi (U. Bologna): Crediting disagreements and the role of gender

March 23, 2020 (11:15am-12:15pm)

• Michela Boldrini (U. Bologna): Social preferences and strategic incentives for cooperation in infinitely repeated PDs

• (DSE members only) Experimental economics research group: Discussion about the organization of the next BEEN and Young Economists' Workshop on Social Economics

February 10, 2020 (11am-12pm)

• José J. Domínguez (U. Padova): Democracy and participation in organisations (with Giulio Ecchia, Natalia Montinari, Raimondello Orsini)

• Alice Guerra (U. Bologna): Vote Buying and Redistribution: A Lab Experiment (with Mogens K. Justesen)

June 3, 2019 (12pm-1pm)

• Eugenia Polizzi (LABSS-ISTC, CNR): Understanding the mechanisms behind radicalization: an experiment in Italian penitentiaries (with Giulia Andrighetto, Valeria Nava, Aron Szekely)

• Daniel Heyen (ETH Zurich) & Alessandro Tavoni (U. Bologna): When public goods are public bads: Free-Rider and Free-Driver equilibria

May 6, 2019 (12pm-1pm)

• Marcello Puca (U. Bergamo): Corruption and Regional Cultures (with Paolo Buonanno and Patrizia Sbriglia)

• Michela Boldrini (U. Bologna): Cooperation feasibility in Infinitely Repeated PDs: what insights from ML on the role of strategic incentives and individual characteristics

April 15, 2019 (12pm-1pm)

• Joshua B. Miller (U. Alicante): The Hot Hand Fallacy Fallacy

April 1, 2019 (1pm-2pm)

• Alberto Prati (AMSE): Mood-driven memory or goal-driven memory? An experiment (with Charlotte Saucet)

• Marco Fabbri (UvA): Follow up of the project: How institutions affects culture: evidence from a large-scale land tenure reform implemented as a randomized control-trial (with Benito Arruñada)

February 4, 2019 (12:30pm-1:30pm)

• Marco Magnani (U. Padova & Italian Regulatory Authority for Energy):  Consumer Inertia in Energy Markets

• Marco Casari (UniBo): Civicness Drain (with Andrea Ichino, Moti Michaeli, Maria De Paola, Ginevra Marandola, Vincenzo Scoppa)

January 7, 2019 (12:30pm-1:30pm)

• Alice Guerra (CBS):  Disentangling the motives of third-party punishment for corruption (with Tatyana Zhuravleva)

• Antonio Schiavone (U. Warwick): Tax evasion: are tax rates determinants or just amplifiers?

December 11, 2018 (12pm-1pm)

• Eugenio Proto (U. Bristol): How Intelligent players teach cooperation

November 6, 2018 (11:30pm-12:30pm)

• Yuki Takahashi: Does Men's Colleague Preference Deter Women's Career Progression?

• Mostafa Delddost (Ph.D. U. Ferrara): Social Value Orientation and Hypothetical Bias: Evidence from Ultimatum Game

October 9, 2018 (11:30pm-12:30pm)

• Natalia Montinari: Gender Inequality in the Labor Market: the Role of Beliefs and Information.

• Experimental economics research group: discussion about the use of the BLESS lab.

June 11, 2018 (12:30pm-13:30pm)

• Alice Guerra (Copenhagen Business School): Vote-Buying, Secret Ballots and Preferences for Redistribution: An Experiment in Kenya", with Mogens K. Justesen (CBS).

• Junaid Arshad: Psychological Utilities and Microfinance Contracts.

May 14, 2018 (12:30pm-13:30pm)

• José J. Domínguez (University of Padova): Affirmative Actions, Women's Participation and Task Assignment in Organizations: Experimental Results", with Natalia Montinari and Antonio Nicolò.

• Michela Boldrini: Twice Losers: how the shadow of cheating affects tax behaviors and norms.

April 9, 2018 (12:30pm-13:30pm)

• Matteo Rizzolli (LUMSA): The puzzle of the certainty vs severity of punishment: theory and an experiment

• Caterina Giannetti and Pietro Guarnieri (University of Pisa) : Individual incentives vs public support: an experiment on contribution to collective environmental goals.

March 12, 2018 (14:00pm-15:00pm)

• Alberto Prati (AMSE): "Time preferences over outcomes duration: a test for inter-temporal discounting"

• Ginevra Marandola (UniBo) : "Inequality and cooperation" with Maria Bigoni.

February 5, 2018 (12:30pm-13:30pm)

• Tommaso Reggiani (Masaryk University): The Effect of Housing on Preferences and Behavior: Lab-in-the-Field Experiments with Participants of a Randomized Controlled Trial (with Ondrej Krcal, Rostislav Stanek)

• Damiano Giacometti (UniBo): TBC

November 27, 2017 (12:30pm-13:30pm)

• Ginevra Marandola (UniBo): " the effect of  honest self-assessment on payment choices" with Giulio Ecchia, Raimondello Orsini, Luca Savorelli.

October 30, 2017 (12:30pm-13:30pm)

• Margherita Fort (UniBo): "TIPs -- timely information for parents" with

  • Maria Bigoni, Annalisa Guarini, Chiara Monfardini, Alessandra Sansavini

• Junaid Arshad (UniBo):"Psychological Utilities and Microfinance Contracts"

June 9, 2017 (11:00am-12:00pm)

• Matteo Cerri (UniBo): "Dopamine driven economy" 

May 5, 2017 (11:00am-12:00pm)

• Natalia Montinari (UniBo): "It's time to cheat!" (with Alessandro Bucciol and Simona Cicognani).

• Simona Cicognani (UniVr): "Control questions in economic lab experiments: which set-up is more advisable?" with Maria Bigoni.

April 7, 2017 (11:00am-12:00pm)

• Valeria Maggian (GATE-LSE): "Information processing and voting in the ageing society" (with Daniele Pennesi and Paolo Roberti).

• Marco Stimolo (Università di Salerno): "State-contingent trust and trustworthiness. A lab experiment"

March 13, 2017 (12:00pm-13:00pm)

• Giulia Andrighetto (ISTC): "Does Honesty Facilitate Cooperation?" (with Aron Szekely)

• Yu Gao (PoliMi) "Inattention or Ignorance? A field experiment on energy-efficient lightbulb adoption in China."

February 13, 2017 (12:30pm-13:30pm)

• Ankush Asri (Unibo): Identity, incentives and cultural assimilation.

• Ginevra Marandola (Unibo): Money vs benefits: a lab in the firm. (with Ecchia, Orsini, Savorelli)

January 9, 2017 (12pm-1pm)

• Marco Casari (Unibo): An experiment about climate change.

• Maria Bigoni (Unibo): Inequality, Responsibility, and Extreme Actions (with S. Bortolotti and E. Nas Ozen)

December 12, 2016 (12pm-1pm)

• Claas Meyer (ZALF): Identity and dishonesty in environmental compliance: Experiments with German farmers.

• Thi Thanh Tam Vu (University of Trento): The wolf in sheep's clothing - An experimental analysis on signaling social preferences

November 14, 2016 (12pm-1pm)

• Caterina Giannetti (University of Pisa): "The effect of ethics meetings on risk-taking behaviour"

• Ginevra Marandola (Unibo): "Defensive Medicine: an experiment"(with A. Antoci, S. Bortolotti, A. Fiori, P. Russu).

October 10, 2016 (12:30pm-1:30pm)

• Huojung Sun (University of Bologna): Bargaining Skills, Urban Experience and the Culture of Obeying Authority: a Lab-in-the-Field Experiment. 

• Emilio Calvano (University of Bologna): RECOMMENDATION bias - an experiment.

• May 9, 2016 (15pm-16pm)

• Simona Cicognani (University of Verona): "The role of identity disclosure and feedback information in an intergenerational common pool resource experiment with a point of no return?"   

• Efşan Nas Ozen (University of Bologna) : "Group identity, inequality, and extreme decisions"(with Maria Bigoni and Stefania Bortolotti).

March 14, 2016 (12pm-1pm)

• Ginevra Marandola (UNIBO): "Does tax evasion reduce fraud against consumers in credence goods markets: a paradox?"   

February 8, 2016 (12pm-1pm)

• Sven Holger (EUI): "Are Women more honest than men? Some empirical evidence"   

• Nan Zhang (EUI): “Does the Morality of Dishonesty Differ Across Societies?  Evidence from a Cross-Cultural Experiment "

January 11, 2016 (12pm-1pm)

• Huojun Sun (Unibo): How does the language we speak affect our preferences for institutions? An experimental investigation using the Italian-Chinese bilinguals?

• Marco Casari (Unibo): Civicness Drain in Italy

December 14, 2015 (12am-13pm)

• Stephen Billion (Unibo): Do Men Take Greater Financial Risk When Seeking a Mate?

• Daniele Pennesi (Unibo): Risk attitude across time.

November 9, 2015 (12am-13pm)

• Simona Cicognani (Unibo): Self-confidence and prejudices: a field experiment.

• Ginevra Marandola (Unibo): Self-determination in the workplace with exogenous shocks: a quasi-field experiment. (with G. Ecchia, R. Orsini and L. Savorelli) 

September 30, 2015 (11:30am-12:30pm)

• Marco Magnani (Unibo): Social Influence Bias in Online Ratings: A Field Experiment (with S. Cicognani and R. Tonielli)

• Maria Bigoni (Unibo): Instructions and pilot for "Coordination and asymmetries: an experimental test" (with C. Le Coq and M. Blazquez) 

May 28, 2015 (3:30-4:30 pm)

• Marco Magnani (Unibo): The problem with social influence bias in ratings 

• Maria Bigoni (Unibo): Coordination and asymmetries: an experimental test (with C. Le Coq and M. Blazquez) 

March 23, 2015 (11:00-12:00 am)

• Max Schaub (European University Institute): Inter-ethnic competition and intra-group cooperation: collecting evidence with lab-in-the field experiments in Georgia. 

• Marco Casari (Unibo): Location and career choices of migrants versus non-migrants 

February 20, 2015 (10:00-11:00 am)

• Wojtek Przepiorka (Utrecht University): Generosity is a sign of trustworthiness – the punishment of meanness is not. 

January 19, 2015 (11:00-12:00 am)

• Ugo Bolletta (Unibo): Infinitely repeated trust game

• Marco Fabbri (Unibo) & Matteo Rizzolli (LUMSA): Being bourgeois: the emergence of private property in the lab

December 1, 2014 (1:00-2:00 pm)

• Luca Savorelli (University of St Andrews): Bottom-up rules and intrinsic motivation in the workplace

• Mesfin Geremew Genie (Unibo): Experimental Economic Games to Reveal Potential Physician's Altruism in Ethiopia

November 10, 2014 (12:00-1:00 pm)

• Selin Efsan Nas Ozen (Unibo): Gender Bias and Socio-Emotional Skills in the Turkish Labour Market

• Maria Bigoni & Stefania Bortolotti (Unibo): A Tale of Two Cities: Experiments on Inequality and Cooperation

October 9, 2014 (11:00-12:00 am)

• Andrea Mattozzi (EUI): Public versus Secret Voting in Committees

• Alice Guerra (Unibo): Aversion to Injure vs. Aversion to Be Injured: An Online Experiment

September 16, 2014 (3:30-4:30 pm)

• Peter Martinsson (University of Gothenburg): Cooperation, Sanction and Age: - Evidence from Behavior Among Children and Adolescents in Four Continents

• Marco Casari (Unibo): Survey and Experiments in Transition Countries