Understanding Behavior to Understand Development

Ingrid Hoem Sjursen and Sandra Halvorsen
PhD candidates, Department of Economics and The Choice Lab, NHH Norwegian School of Economics

Have you ever participated in an experiment before? In this lecture, you ill take part in one. Sjursen and Halvorsen are behavioural economists and use experimental methods and insights from economics and psychology to understand how people make decisions.

The aim of this session is to introduce you to the field of behavioural economics and illustrate how it can be used to shed light on important questions in development: How can the poor access credit, save more, and participate more in elections? And how can we increase compliance with HIV treatment and utilisation of mosquito nets?

There will be in-class experiment and examples from their own research in Ethiopia and Tanzania.

Ingrid Hoem Sjursen is a PhD candidate in economics at the Department of Economics and The Choice Lab, at the Norwegian School of Economics. She is involved in the CMIREPOA research programme ‘Tanzania as a Future Petro-State’. She has previously worked as research assistant at CMI, and was affiliated with the institute while writing her master thesis. Sjursen holds a master’s degree in economics from the University of Bergen.

Sandra Halvorsen is a PhD candidate in Economics at the Department of Economics and The Choice Lab, at the Norwegian School of Economics. She is involved in the four year research project with CMI on ‘Women in the developmental state: female employment and empowerment in Ethiopia’. Halvorsen holds a master’s degree in business and administration from the Norwegian School of Economics.