The workshop will focus on the limits of markets, the morality of decisions in markets, and paternalism. It will bring together scholars from different disciplines (mainly economics, political science, and philosophy) who are working on these topics. The workshop aims to foster discussions across disciplines on the ethical considerations surrounding market activities, repugnant markets, and the government’s role in regulating such markets.

Wie steht es in Deutschland um die Chancen, einen Kindergartenplatz und den gewünschten Schul- oder Studienplatz zu erhalten? Und wie wichtig ist es überhaupt, dass ein Kind in den Kindergarten geht und welche Schule es besucht? Inwiefern werden die Lebenschancen durch einen Kindergartenplatz, den Platz an der Wunschschule oder -universität beeinflusst? Wir sprechen über Zulassungsverfahren, Zulassungskriterien und die Frage, ob sie fair und effektiv sind.

The WZB is planning an international conference on matching markets. The conference "Designing and evaluating matching markets,” starting in the morning of June 27, 2019, and ending on June 28, 2019, will take place at the WZB in Berlin. The conference is organized by Inácio Bó (WZB), Dorothea Kübler (WZB), and Lars Ehlers (University of Montreal).

The Berlin Applied Micro Seminar (BAMS) is a weekly seminar, jointly organized by DIW Berlin, Hertie School of Governance, HU Berlin, FU Berlin, TU Berlin, WZB, the Berlin Centre for Consumer Policies (BCCP) and the SFB TRR 190.

The focus of this workshop is a book-in-progress, by Macartan Humphreys (Columbia University/WZB) and Alan Jacobs (University of British Columbia/Hertie School of Governance), on an approach to drawing causal inferences from qualitative and quantitative evidence in a manner guided by theory. Topics to be discussed will include causal models and directed acyclic graphs (DAGs) and their uses for research design, the integration of process tracing with correlational analysis, case selection, and the optimal mix ​of ​intensive and extensive investigation.

The WZB is planning an international conference on matching markets. The conference "Matching Markets: Combining Theory and Applications," starting in the morning of July 14, 2016, and ending on July 15, 2016, will take place at the WZB in Berlin. The conference is organized by Inácio Bó (WZB), Rustamdjan Hakimov (WZB) and Dorothea Kübler (WZB).

Matching theory has matured to a point where matching theorists are able to make policy suggestions for real-life markets. The theory is supplemented by experiments and empirical analyses examining how to operate such markets.

Das Mentoringprogramm für Nachwuchswissenschaftlerinnen der Economic Science Association (ESA) stellt dieses Mal Experimente zur Untersuchung von menschlichem Verhalten in den Mittelpunkt seines Treffens.

Why is it forbidden to sell and buy organs? Why is the exchange of kidneys that leads to many successful transplants allowed in some countries such as the US, but not in others like Germany? Which markets or transactions we allow, affects the choices that people have, and how they may pursue their goals. Kidney exchange would seem needlessly complex if we instead allowed kidneys to be bought and sold; but this is illegal everywhere except in the Islamic Republic of Iran. There are many other transactions that are repugnant or forbidden, and this differs between countries.

The seminar will be followed by a panel discussion. The topic is "Effective RCTs: Achieving the gold standard in empirical social sciences". The three panelists are Esther Duflo (MIT), Raji Jayaraman (ESMT Berlin) and Felix Elwert (University of Wisconsin-Madison and WZB). The discussion is moderated by Dorothea Kübler (WZB).

Deirdre McCloskey is a Distinguished Professor of Economics, History, English, and Communication at the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC). Her main contributions are to the economic history of Britain, the quantification of historical inquiry, the rhetoric of economics, the rhetoric of the human sciences, economic methodology, virtue ethics, feminist economics, heterodox economics, the role of mathematics in economic analysis, and the use (and misuse) of significance testing in economics.

In the last 20 years, the study of matching markets has seen great innovations and marked progress. The theory has matured to a point where matching theorists are able to make policy suggestions for real-life markets. The theory is supplemented by experiments examining how to operate such markets. Notable applications are matching markets such as medical labor markets for interns, college admissions procedures, school choice programs, social housing assignments, and kidney exchange programs for patients all over the world.

This two-day conference focuses on field experiments, how they can inform our understanding of economic behavior and what its limitations are. The covered topics include incentives in the workplace, social identity and discrimination, selection issues, and preference anomalies. The aim of this conference is to bring together senior and junior researchers to discuss and present their work.

The workshop is organized jointly by the research centers CIRPÉE
and WZB and will be held in Berlin at the WZB on July 12, 2013. The workshop will start in the morning and will end with a dinner on that day.

The main goal of the workshop is to bring together researchers analyzing ambiguity experimentally and theoretically, preferably in the context of markets.

John E. Roemer (Yale University)

SFB-TR15 Berlin Seminar Series

The Berlin Behavioral Economics Workshop is a half-year joint event between the DIW, ESMT, WZB, and TU Berlin with the aim of fostering the exchange between active researchers in the areas of behavioral and experimental economics. The 2012 workshop is jointly organized by Dorothea Kübler (WZB), Steffen Huck (WZB and UCL), Paul Heidhues (ESMT), Frank Heinemann (TU), Georg Weizsäcker (DIW and UCL) and Radosveta Ivanova-Stenzel (TU).

Charles Bellemare, Sabine Kröger and Dorothea Kübler of Berlin's Social Science Research Center WZB will organize a workshop on "Econometric analysis of experimental data". The workshop will be held in Berlin on August 18 and 19 and aims at promoting the use of sophisticated econometric techniques to analyze experimental data. About a dozen presentations are expected.