Alger Lab

Research focus

ERC Advanced Grant · 2017

Human motivation: evolutionary foundations and their implications for economics

Economics provides decision-makers with powerful tools to analyse a wide range of issues. The methodological unity of the discipline and its quest for a general understanding of market as well as non-market interactions have given the discipline great influence on policy. A core component of economics is its assumption that individuals act as if they each had some goal function that they seek to maximise, under the constraints they face and the information they have. Despite significant advances in behavioural economics, there still is no consensus as to whether and why certain preferences are more likely than others. Further progress could be made if the factors that shape human motivation…

From the public funding record at EU CORDIS. Describes the funded project, not the reviews below.