Author's posts
Jan 04 2021
My first sabbatical begins
A sabbatical is a time for academics to engage in scholarly research away from their home institution (while still getting paid). The idea, I think, is to encourage faculty members to expand their network, learn new skills, and begin large projects that might not otherwise get off the ground amidst the burden of teaching and …
Apr 28 2020
New article out on when to present online reviews
After several years of ups and downs, I am very pleased to announce the publication of my new paper, “The importance of online reviews depends on when they are presented” in the journal, Decision Support Systems. The paper brings to bear a classic focus of cognitive psychology – information order effects – in a much …
Dec 06 2019
Presented at ANZMAC in Wellington
My first visit to New Zealand took me to Wellington to attend the 2019 Australia New Zealand Marketing Academy Conference. The conference theme was “Winds of Change” and I very quickly realised that the title was also a clue to the fact that Wellington is, arguably, the windiest city in the world. For most of …
Jul 23 2019
New article out on the collective aggregation effect (+ a podcast)
Several years ago, Rick Larrick and I wondered about an important problem: How do you motivate people to make a contribution when that contribution would represent just a small drop in a bucket, nay, an Olympic-sized pool. Building from our previous work regarding the benefits of increasing the scale upon which fuel consumption is expressed, …
Dec 18 2018
New article out on why overconfidence is influenced by how relevant information is learned
There has been a lot of previous research on how risky choices differ depending on whether information (e.g., the performance of a worker) is learned about by “experience” (e.g., a front-line manager observing daily performance) or learned about from “description (e.g., a top-level manager reading a summary of performance over a long period of time). …
Dec 18 2018
New article out on how people underestimate the carbon footprint of foods
After ~5 years of effort, my collaborators (Richard Larrick, Shajuti Hossain, and Dalia Patino-Echeverri ) and I have published some really interesting research today in Nature Climate Change. The take away from this research is in the title: “Consumers underestimate the emissions associated with food but are aided by labels”. You can read the paper here …
Nov 18 2018
Presented at SJDM in New Orleans
This week I traveled to New Orleans to attend the 39th Annual Conference of the Society for Judgment and Decision Making. This was my second visit to NOLA. This time the weather was cold and windy – a low season for tourism. So, it wasn’t too much of a surprise when I was the only one …
Sep 25 2018
Presented at the Sydney Behavioural Economics & Behavioural Science Meetup
Today I presented to the Sydney Behavioural Economics & Behavioural Science Meetup group. It is great that this group exists and allows people from different backgrounds – industry, government, and academia – to grab a beer and discuss behavioural science. My talk was provocatively titled “Nudges vs. Boosts“. Here’s the blurb: There are many interventions that …
Apr 20 2018
Presented on Behavioural Economics at the Link Group Conference
On 20 April 2018, I had the opportunity to give a keynote talk at the Link Group conference, which is a firm that administers over 10 million superannuation accounts on behalf of their client funds (e.g., AustralianSuper, REST, Cbus and Hostplus). In attendance were about 50 Fund CEOs, COOs and other Marketing, IT and Operations professionals. My …
Feb 16 2018
Introducing Behavioural Economics to the National Australia Bank
Today I had the great pleasure to travel down to Melbourne and present an introductory behavioural economics talk to approximately 100 interested staff members at the National Australia Bank. I covered many of the basic concepts including loss aversion, prospect theory, mental accounting, and the endowment effect. There were some great questions at the end, …