Prof. Ananish Chaudhuri, Ph.D.

Experiments in Economics: Playing Fair with Money

This is the title of a critically acclaimed book by Ananish Chaudhuri, published by Routledge. The book provides an easy to follow guide to economic experiments and specifically those that explore notions of fairness, altruism and trust in economic transactions and how findings in the field can change the way we approach a variety of economic problems such as pricing by firms, written contracts between parties, making voluntary contributions to charity or the provision of micro-credit to small entrepreneurs. The book draws examples from literature, history and the real world, including issues in environmental and development economics.

Mr Chaudhuri’s research projects include: 1) issues of gender and leadership; whether male or female bosses adopt different strategies in terms of managing personnel and 2) how different payment schemes affect productivity and learning in cognitively challenging tasks. He is currently working on whether and to what extent altruistic peer-to-peer punishments are essential in maintaining cooperation in social dilemmas over a long horizon; and whether appeals to human good-will are effective substitutes?

He will deliver three CES Lectures entitled: “Fairness and Economics: Experiments in Social Preferences”.

Ananish Chaudhuri has published widely including in such leading journals as the Review of Economic Studies, Economic Journal, Journal of Public Economics, Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization and Experimental Economics. Between 2007 and 2010, he served as the Editor-in-Chief of New Zealand Economic Papers. He was an Associate Editor of the Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization between 2011 and 2015 and is currently associated in an editorial capacity with the Journal of Economic Psychology, Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics and Games.

Ananish Chaudhuri is Professor of Experimental Economics and currently the Head of the Department of Economics at the University of Auckland. Mr Chaudhuri received his PhD from Rutgers University and prior to joining the University of Auckland, taught at Washington State University and Wellesley College.