Seminar Public Policy: Cognitive Foundations of Economic Decision-Making

Instructors: Univ.-Prof. Dr. Daniel Schunk; Nina Zipperle
Shortname: HS: Publ Policy
Course No.: 03.897.2949
Course Type: Hauptseminar

Requirements / organisational issues

No specific MIEPP course is required. However, sound knowledge of experimental methods is useful.

Schedule:
November 05, 2025: Introductory session
November 20, 2025: Individual meetings, questions on papers
November 21, 2025: Individual meetings, questions on papers
January 08, 2026, 11.59 pm: Deadline for a draft of your paper
January 15, 2026: Seminar with discussions & presentations
January 16, 2026: Seminar with discussions & presentations
January 30, 2026, 11:59 pm: Deadline for final paper

Recommended reading list

Enke, B. (2024). The cognitive turn in behavioral economics.

Contents

Economic behavior is shaped not only by external incentives but also by how individuals process information and form beliefs. Cognitive factors such as attention, memory, and mental models play a central role in how people interpret their environment, make choices, and respond to uncertainty. These processes can simplify decision-making but also introduce biases and errors with meaningful economic consequences.
This seminar investigates how cognition influences individual and collective economic outcomes. We explore how people allocate attention, recall and use past experiences, form beliefs through mental models, and sometimes make flawed inferences. We also consider how complexity and cognitive noise affect choices, and how misperceptions about others shape behavior in social and market settings.

Dates

Date (Day of the week) Time Location
11/05/2025 (Wednesday) 12:00 - 13:00 01 130 RW 6
1226 - Haus Recht und Wirtschaft I
01/15/2026 (Thursday) 08:15 - 19:45 01 130 RW 6
1226 - Haus Recht und Wirtschaft I
01/16/2026 (Friday) 08:15 - 11:45 01 130 RW 6
1226 - Haus Recht und Wirtschaft I