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Patricio S. Dalton
Associate Professor of Economics
Department of Economics, Tilburg University
Affiliated Fellow at CAGE, CentER, EBC, TiBER, IGL and IPA
J-PAL invited researcher (DigiFI Africa)
Coordinator for Tilburg of the ENTER Exchange Network (Carlos III, Mannheim, UAB, UCL, ULB, Stockholm -HHS & IIES, TSE, Tilburg). Follow ENTER on Twitter: https://twitter.com/enter_econ.
Member of Editorial Advisory Board of the National Institute Economic Review.
Representative for The Netherlands at the Society for the Advancement of Behavioral Economics.
Co-founder and Director of the Network of Development Economists in The Netherlands
Office K-315, PO Box 90153, 5000 LE, Tilburg, NL.
Phone (office): +31 13 466 4032
email: p.s.dalton AT uvt DOT nl
My UvT page, Twitter: https://twitter.com/DaltonPato , My Google Scholar. The Experimental Economists @ Tilburg
Research interest
My research lies in the intersection between poverty, psychology and decision-making using both formal models and experiments in the laboratory and the field. My theoretical work addresses the implications of decision-making biases for welfare economics and the link between psychology and poverty. My experimental research has focused on the effect of different aspects of the condition of poverty on aspirations, productivity, preferences, beliefs, biases, emotions, cognitive function and rationality. I also study the effect of goal setting on productivity, of moral support on behavior and of unemployment benefits on labor supply. Most recently, funded by a DFID Grant, I have designed and conducted Randomized Control Trials (RCTs) to understand the constraints of small-firm growth in developing countries. In Kenya, I study the adoption and impact of mobile money by small merchants and how mobile improves their access to finance. In Indonesia, I investigate how small business growth can be fostered by curating and distributing knowledge of successful local practices. In Ghana, I test how the sole fact of setting mere goals can increase labor supply of rural workers. In addition, I am currently working on an RCT in India to improve parental practices (funded by an ESRC-DFID grant), on RCTs in Uganda to improve refugees' self-reliance (funded by an SSH-OC NWO Grant), and on an RCT in Spain to evaluate the impact of big-scale EU grants for R&D (funded by the European Comission and The World Bank).
Recent Media Coverage
An article by Tilburg University about my research on moral support and performance.
A podcast by NOVAFRICA about my research on productivity improvement of small informal firms in developing countries (in English)
An interview by Tilburg University about my research (in English)
Tilburg Impact Award Nomination (video here)
An interview by New Scientist magazine about my research (in English)
An interview by Trend magazine about my research (in Dutch)
A recent interview by Rethinking Economics published at ESB about teaching Economics (in Dutch)