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Paul Seabright

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Research on behavioral decision-making

In the last few years I have undertaken a number of projects on individual decision-making under various influences – frames, nudges, narratives, channels of attention and group membership.

“Alcohol, Behavioral Norms and Sexual Violence on US College Campuses”, joint with Julia Hoefer, was issued on March 28th 2022 as a Discussion Paper by the CEPR.

The published papers from this line of work are:

“Conformity in mate choice, the overlooked social component of animal and human culture” (with Sabine Nobel, Antoine Jacquet, Guillaume Isabel, Arnaud Pocheville and Etienne Danchin), Biol. Rev. (2023), 98, pp. 132–149. 132 doi: 10.1111/brv.12899.

“Betting on the Lord: Lotteries and Religiosity in Haiti”(with Emmanuelle Auriol, Diego Delissaint, Maleke Fourati and Pepita Miquel-Florensa), World Development 144 (2021), https://doi.org/10.1016/j.worlddev.2021.105441.

“Favoring your in-group can harm both them and you: ethnicity and public goods provision in China”, with César Mantilla, Ling Zhou, Charlotte Wang, Donghui Yang and Suping Shen, Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization 185 (2021) 211–233. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jebo.2021.02.016.

“Honest signalling in trust interactions: smiles rated as genuine induce trust and signal higher earnings opportunities”, with Samuele Centorrino, Elodie Djemai, Astrid Hopfensitz, Manfred Milinski, Evolution and Human Behavior 36(1), (2015), 8-16. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.evolhumbehav.2014.08.001.

“How Does Ranking Affect User Choice in Online Search?” (with Mark Glick, Greg Richards and Margarita Sapozhnikov), Review of Industrial Organization 45 (2014), 99–119. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11151-014-9435-y

I am currently working with Selin Goksel, Assistant Professor at the University of Amsterdam, on a project involving the influence of narrative framing on the effectiveness of Bayesian updating.

Research on gender, networks and marriage markets

In the last few years I have undertaken a number of projects with co-authors Sylvie Borau, Jeanne Bovet, Guido Friebel, Marie Lalanne, Eva Raiber, Weiwei Ren, Peter Schwardmann and Charlotte Wang.

The published papers that have come out of this line of work are (the most recently published first):

What Do Parents Want? Parental Spousal Preferences in China, Economic Development and Cultural Change, 2023, https://doi.org/10.1086/717903. Preprint available here.

“The old boy network: are the professional networks of females executives less effective than men’s for advancing their careers?”, joint with Marie Lalanne, Journal of Institutional Economics (2022), pp. 1-20.  https://doi.org/10.1017/S1744137421000953.

“Gender Differences in Social Interactions”, joint with Guido Friebel, Marie Lalanne, Bernard Richter and Peter Schwardmann, Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization 186 (2021), 33-45, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jebo.2021.03.016.

“Parent-Offspring Conflict over Mate Choice: an experimental study in China”, joint with Jeanne Bovet, Eva Raiber, Weiwei Ren and Charlotte Wang, British Journal of Psychology (2018). doi:10.1111/bjop.12319.

“Honest signalling in trust interactions: smiles rated as genuine induce trust and signal higher earnings opportunities”, with Samuele Centorrino, Elodie Djemai, Astrid Hopfensitz, Manfred Milinski, Evolution and Human Behavior, 36(1), (2015), 8-16. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.evolhumbehav.2014.08.001.

“Do women have longer conversations? Telephone evidence of gendered communication strategies”, joint with Guido Friebel, Journal of Economic Psychology, 2011, doi:10.1016/j.joep.2010.12.008.

Working papers and those currently under submission include (not a complete list):

“Dating Choice and Career Choice: do the dating choices of ambitious women reinforce gender stereotypes in the labor market?”, with Jeanne Bovet and Sylvie Borau, under submission.

New publication: Evaluating social contract theory in the light of evolutionary social science

This paper, which is joint with Jonathan Stieglitz and Karine Van Der Straeten, is forthcoming in Evolutionary Human Science. A non-copy-edited version is here.

The Thinking Head

This beautiful bronze statue, La Cabeza Pensante, by the sculptor Maria Purificacion Herrero, was given to me in Bilbao by the Urrutia Elejalde Foundation on the 8th November at the award of their 2013 Diversity Prize. I am delighted. More details here.

 

Institute for Advanced Study in Toulouse

We have a new website – find it here.

New Research

Find below a list of the research I am currently completing or that has been recently published.

“Migration and the Equilibrium Prevalence of Infectious Diseases”, working paper with Alice Mesnard, available here.

“How Does Ranking Affect User Choice in Online Search?”, working paper with Mark Glick, Greg Richards and Margarita Sapozhnikov, available here.

“Cooperation Against Theft: A Test of Incentives for Water Management in Tunisia” (with Wided Mattoussi), forthcoming in American Journal of Agricultural Economics 2013. Available here.

Scott Morton, Fiona and Seabright, Paul, 2013 “Research into biomarkers: how does drug procurement affect the design of clinical trials?” Health Management, Policy and Innovation 1(3): 1-15. Available here.

Professional Networks and their Coevolution with Executives’ Careers: Evidence from Europe and the US (with Nicoletta Berardi). Working paper, available here. Figure 1 above, drawn from that paper, shows how executives with larger networks are more likely to move between firms.

“Soviet Power Plus Electrification: what is the long-run legacy of communism?” (with Wendy Carlin and Mark Schaffer). Available here, published in Explorations in Economic History 2012. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.eeh.2012.07.003

“The Three Musketeers: What Do We Still Need to Know About our Passage through Prehistory?”, Biological Theory, 2012, doi: 10.1007/s13752-012-0017-7 Available at SpringerLink OR [Download PDF of proof copy] [ Download PDF of related article by Sterelny ]

“The Birth of Hierarchy”, in Calcott et al (2013 forthcoming): Cooperation and its Evolution, MIT Press. PDF available here.

 

“The Old Boy Network: Gender Differences in the Impact of Social Networks on Remuneration in Top Executive Jobs”, IDEI Working Paper, no. 689, octobre 2011 (with Marie Lalanne), revised September 2012.

 

 

 

 

 

On Lying, Risk-Taking and the Implosion of the Euro

The second PUP in Europe Annual Lecture lecture took place at Goodenough College on 18th April 2012.

The podcast is here: the slides are here.

Diane Coyle covered the lecture on her blog here, and the Guardian referred to it in an editorial.

I wrote this op-ed piece for the Guardian on the same theme on 21st May 2012.

The Cinemagraph

The Cinemagraph is a technique pioneered by Jamie Beck and Kevin Burg, which uses the old animated .gif format to stunning effect (see www.cinemagraphs.com). The result is still photos imbued with subtle motion.

Compare the still picture above to the cinemagraph below, made by Stéphanie Renard and Alice Seabright.

Here is a sample of some of my favourite cinemagraphs.

A Wonderful World. (Image source: From Me To You)

Can You Smell Them? (Image source: From Me To You)

Endless Time. (Image source: Tilen Sepic)

Shave And A Haircut. (Image source: From Me To You)

Meet Me At The Bar. (Image source: From Me To You)

 

 

 

Photographers I admire

Above: “City of Shadows: St. Petersburg 1990s”, by Alexey Titarenko.

 

Here are some contemporary photographers whose work I admire.

Stéphanie Renard

Stéphanie is a portraitist and still life photographer based in Toulouse. Thanks to her for the portrait on the About page.

See her website.

 

 

 

Gauri Gill

Gauri Gill has won the 2011 Grange Prize for contemporary photography. She was born in Chandigarh, India in 1970. She received BFAs at the Delhi College of Art, New Delhi (1992) and at the Parsons School of Design, New York (1994); and an MFA in Art at Stanford University, California (2002). Her work has been exhibited widely in India and across the world. She lives in Delhi.

See her website.

 

 

Alexey Titarenko.

Alexey Titarenko received his Master of Fine Arts degree from the Department of Cinematic and Photographic Art at Leningrad’s Institute of Culture in 1983. He began taking photographs at the beginning of the 1970s, and in 1978 became a member of the well-known Leningrad photographic club Zerkalo, where he had his first solo exhibition (1978).

Since this was creative activity that had no connection with the official Soviet propaganda, the opportunity to declare himself publicly as an artist came only at the peak of Perestroika in 1989 with his “Nomenclature of Signs” exhibition and the creation of Ligovka 99, a photographers’ exhibition space that was independent of the Communist ideology.

Titarenko has received numerous awards from institutions such as the Musee de l’Elysee in Lausanne, Switzerland; the Soros Center for Contemporary Art in St. Petersburg; and the Mosaique program of the Luxemburg National Audiovisual Centre. He has participated in many international festivals, biennales, and projects and has had more than 30 personal exhibitions, both in Europe and the United States.

Thanks to Alexey for permission to use his photograph “City of Shadows: St. Petersburg 1990s” in my chapter “Darwin and Human Society” in the book Darwin.

See his website.

La Société des Inconnus

La Société des Inconnus, Paul Seabright, 2011. Editions Markus Haller.

La théorie de l’évolution suggère que nous ne sommes pas naturellement disposés à  faire confiance à des inconnus, c’est-à-dire à des gens en dehors de notre famille ou de notre clan. Pourtant, aujourd’hui, nous confions notre vie aux pilotes d’avion, notre argent est géré par des personnes que nous ne connaissons pas, nous mangeons au restaurant sans craindre une intoxication et nous cotoyons une foule d’inconnus potentiellement dangereux dans le métro. Comment en sommes-nous arrivés là  ?

Paul Seabright décrit les mécanismes psychologiques, sociaux et économiques qui ont transformé, au fil des derniers dix mille ans, nos ancêtres suspicieux, xénophobes et belliqueux en individus qui dépendent d’un réseau institutionnel complexe constitué de personnes inconnues les unes aux autres. Or, ces mêmes mécanismes entraînent aussi des fléaux comme les crises financières, l’exclusion des faibles, la dégradation de l’environnement naturel, ou la prolifération des armes de guerre. Pour parer à ces conséquences fâcheuses de façon intelligente et efficace, il est essentiel de comprendre la fragilité des institutions qui font de nous des hommes modernes.

Sans jargon et à l’aide de beaucoup d’exemples, La société des inconnus intègre la pensée économique au contexte plus large de nos connaissances en biologie, anthropologie, psychologie et histoire, et propose une analyse lucide du fonctionnement de la société. Érudit et pertinent, cet ouvrage nous fournit des clés pour une meilleure compréhension des défis sociaux majeurs auxquels nous devrons faire face dans les années à venir.

Personne ne peut tourner les pages de ce livre sans découvrir à plusieurs reprises des idées à la fois inattendues et saisissantes que l’on voudrait poursuivre. Robert M. Solow, lauréat du prix Nobel d’économie

Dans la presse : éconoclaste (concernant la 1e éd. anglaise) Books  Le Monde  Les Echos  Le Temps  France Culture “Du grain à moudre”  Radio Canada “On aura tout lu”  AGEFI  Le Matin Dimanche  Alternatives Économiques  Sciences Humaines  France Culture “On n’arrête pas l’éco” Revue d’Etudes Agricoles et Environnementales

Commander : FNAC  Decitre  amazon.fr  chapitre.com  alapage.com  Place des libraires  Payot (Suisse) 1001 libraires

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