Behavioral public policy (with applications to finance)

May
16

Video

Overview

Consumers’ decisions often appear suboptimal, especially in the domain of finance. How can we measure decision quality, and what helps improve decisions? What are our biases when judging whether others’ decisions might be mistaken and when deciding about policies to improve decisions? In his inaugural lecture, Sandro Ambühl answered these questions, both in the financial domain and beyond.

Sandro Ambühl was appointed to the Assistant Professorship of the Behavioral Economics of Financial Markets, endowed by the UBS center, in 2020. His work focuses on behavioral economics and the quality of decision making. It relies on both behavioral experiments and economic theory.

Professor Ambühl's inaugural lecture was open to the public and was followed by a cocktail reception in the Lichthof.

Consumers’ decisions often appear suboptimal, especially in the domain of finance. How can we measure decision quality, and what helps improve decisions? What are our biases when judging whether others’ decisions might be mistaken and when deciding about policies to improve decisions? In his inaugural lecture, Sandro Ambühl answered these questions, both in the financial domain and beyond.

Sandro Ambühl was appointed to the Assistant Professorship of the Behavioral Economics of Financial Markets, endowed by the UBS center, in 2020. His work focuses on behavioral economics and the quality of decision making. It relies on both behavioral experiments and economic theory.

Sandro Ambühl, UBS Foundation Assistant Professor for Behavioral Economics of Financial Markets
Sandro Ambühl, UBS Foundation Assistant Professor for Behavioral Economics of Financial Markets

Speaker

UBS Foundation Assistant Professor for Behavioral Economics of Financial Markets

Sandro Ambühl obtained his PhD in economics from Stanford University in 2016. He joins the UBS Center from his previous position as Assistant Professor of Economics at the Department of Management, UTSC, and the Rotman School of Business, University of Toronto. One focus of Sandro's research studies how to help people make good financial decisions. A second strand of research concerns policies for the exchange of goods about which people have ethical intuitions, as is the case, for example, with incentives for vaccine uptake or clinical trial participation. He addresses these questions using a combination of controlled experiments and economic theory. In 2017 he was awarded the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation grant “Using Behavioral Welfare Economics to Improve Financial Decision Making”. In 2022, his article "What Motivates Paternalism? An Experimental Study" (with B. Douglas Bernheim and Axel Ockenfels) was awarded the Exeter Prize for the best paper published in the previous calendar year in a peer-reviewed journal in the fields of Experimental Economics, Decision Theory and Behavioural Economics.

UBS Foundation Assistant Professor for Behavioral Economics of Financial Markets

Sandro Ambühl obtained his PhD in economics from Stanford University in 2016. He joins the UBS Center from his previous position as Assistant Professor of Economics at the Department of Management, UTSC, and the Rotman School of Business, University of Toronto. One focus of Sandro's research studies how to help people make good financial decisions. A second strand of research concerns policies for the exchange of goods about which people have ethical intuitions, as is the case, for example, with incentives for vaccine uptake or clinical trial participation. He addresses these questions using a combination of controlled experiments and economic theory. In 2017 he was awarded the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation grant “Using Behavioral Welfare Economics to Improve Financial Decision Making”. In 2022, his article "What Motivates Paternalism? An Experimental Study" (with B. Douglas Bernheim and Axel Ockenfels) was awarded the Exeter Prize for the best paper published in the previous calendar year in a peer-reviewed journal in the fields of Experimental Economics, Decision Theory and Behavioural Economics.

Venue

University of Zurich

Main Auditorium, KOL-G-201, Rämistrasse 71, 8006 Zürich
(Google Maps)