UvA

Future seminars

 

2025-06-26 Ryan Oprea (University of California Santa Barbara)
Behavioral Attenuation (with Enke, Graeber, & Yang).
Room: E0.15, 16:00-17:15.
We report a large-scale examination of behavioral attenuation due to information-processing constraints, the elasticity of people’s decisions to fundamentals is generally too small. We implement 30 experiments on a broad range of economic decisions, including choice, valuation, belief formation, strategic games and generic optimization. In 93% of our experiments, the elasticity of decisions to fundamentals decreases in participants’ cognitive uncertainty. Moreover, in decision problems with objective solutions, elasticities are universally smaller than is optimal. We show that the magnitude of attenuation is partly driven by the complexity of the decision problem. Many widely-studied anomalies represent special cases of behavioral attenuation.

 

2025-07-03 Ivan Soraperra (Max Planck Institute for Human Development.)
How to Curb Over-The-Counter dispensing of Antibiotics? Evidence from a Field Experiment in Ethiopia.
Room: TBA, 16:00-17:15.
In a randomized controlled trial among Addis Ababa’s community pharmacies, we implemented informational interventions to curb over-the-counter (OTC) antibiotic dispensing, which, especially in developing countries, contributes to the development of antimicrobial resistance (AMR). Our results show that one-time letters to pharmacists and a poster placed within the pharmacy premises significantly reduce OTC antibiotic sales in the short run, with the poster’s effect persisting five months later. We observe no significant impact on antibiotic prices. These findings highlight the potential of targeted informational interventions to tackle OTC antibiotic dispensing and mitigate the growing AMR threat.