AXA Research Fund Post-doc scholarship: Cognitive biases, perceived wealth and macroeconomic instability.

The research project combines a series of empirical experiments and a theoretical macroeconomic agent-based model. Based on recent findings from behavioral economics and social cognitive psychology, the research introduces the construct of perceived wealth, which identifies a biased perception of individual net worth, whose value deviates from the actual value of wealth. By means of laboratory experiments, it investigates how perceived wealth leads individuals to make non-optimal consumption and borrowing decisions that result in large household debt accumulation. Eventually, macro ABM is developed in order to evaluate the macroeconomic implications of such individual behaviour. 

Principal Investigator: Alberto Cardaci. The project will start in September 2017 and will last 2 years.