Social information and the dynamics of norm-related beliefs
School of Economics and Finance invites you to a seminar presented by Associate Professor James Tremewan from HSE University
Authors: Julien Benistant, Remi Suchon, James Tremewan
Abstract
In an online experiment we investigate how the effect of both normative and empirical information regarding donations to a charity is mediated by associated norm-related beliefs. First we show that empirical expectations (beliefs about what others do), normative expectations (beliefs about what others think is morally correct), and personal norms (one's own belief about what is morally correct) are all independently important in determining donation decisions. We then show that donations and all of these norm-related beliefs are shifted to varying degrees by exogenous information about others' actions or personal norms. Finally, we show that while empirical information works largely through empirical expectations, much of the effect of normative information is mediated by empirical expectations and personal norms. Overall, these three types of beliefs explain around 30-40\% of the treatment effects.
About Speaker
James Tremewan is an experimental and behavioral economist who earned his Ph.D. from the Toulouse School of Economics and currently serves as a tenured Associate Professor in the Department of Theoretical Economics at HSE University in Moscow
Prior to joining HSE, he held positions at the University of Vienna, University of Auckland, IESEG School of Management, and Tor Vergata University of Rome. His research spans multilateral bargaining and coalition formation, belief elicitation methods, the role of group identity in strategic environments, corruption and transparency, gender representation in bargaining, and more recently, ambiguity attitudes and pro-environmental behavior.
His work has been published in leading journals including Management Science, American Political Science Review, European Economic Review, Journal of Public Economics, Experimental Economics, and Games and Economic Behavior, and he is actively involved in the Laboratory for Experimental Economics and Finance (LEEF) at HSE.