Arno
RIEDL

SCIENTIFIC PROJECT

We are living in times of increasing background uncertainty, that is, uncertainty beyond individual control. The Covid-19 pandemic and climate change are events inducing background uncertainty. This project investigates the impact of such uncertainty on core elements of social human behavior: social preferences and social norm compliance.

The project examines it at the behavioral and the neural level, thereby integrating knowledge from economics, psychology and neuroscience. It provides correlational and causal evidence on the behavioral level using large scale surveys and laboratory experiments, and it employs neuroeconomics experiments to uncover the cognitive and neural processes underlying behavioral changes.

The exploration of causes of an erosion of either social preferences or social norm compliance is important because it can have significant adverse societal effects as changes on the individual level can aggravate in the aggregate through, e.g., voting and coordinated actions.

BIOGRAPHY

Arno Riedl studied economics at the University of Vienna. He is professor of public economics at Maastricht University. In his research he uses an interdisciplinary approach to investigate human behavior.