Assoc. Prof. Dennie van Dolder, Ph.D.

Behavioural Economics in the Lab and the Field

Dennie van Dolder is a behavioural economist who employs a broad portfolio of research methods – including experiments and advanced microeconometric techniques – to better understand human judgment and decision-making. While empirical research in behavioural economics relies primarily on experiments or surveys, he frequently utilises large, rich datasets from carefully selected field settings that can be characterised as natural (or “naturally occurring”) experiments.

For example, in a recent paper, Dennie van Dolder and co-authors analysed how audience members in a televised natural experiment allocated €10,000 among financially distressed individuals. They find that perceptions of impact, reflecting utilitarian considerations, influenced giving behaviour more strongly than perceptions of personal responsibility, with impact outweighing responsibility by approximately two to one.

While at CES, Mr. van Dolder will collaborate with Valeria Burdea on a project studying how well individuals can detect malleable or indirect lies, and how interventions may enhance their ability to recognise deceptive statements. This work builds on Mr. van Dolder’s previous research on malleable lies (Management Science, 2019) and Ma. Burdea’s work on deceptive communication (Journal of Political Economy: Microeconomics, 2024).

Currently, Dennie van Dolder is an Associate Professor of Economics at the University of Essex and Director of the Essex Centre for Behavioural Science. He is also an Associate Editor for the Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization. Before joining Essex, he was an Assistant Professor at Vrije Universiteit (VU) Amsterdam and a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Nottingham. He holds bachelor’s and master’s degrees in Sociology from Utrecht University and a master’s degree in Behavioural Economics from the University of Nottingham. He completed his PhD in Economics at Erasmus University Rotterdam and the Tinbergen Institute under the supervision of Peter Wakker and Han Bleichrodt.