Postdoctoral Scholar - O'Donnell Center for Behavioral Economics - Haas School of Business

The O’Donnell Center for Behavioral Economics and Finance, housed jointly in the Haas School of Business and the Department of Economics, seeks applications for a Postdoctoral Scholar. The Postdoctoral Scholar will be part of Berkeley’s O’Donnell Center for Behavioral Economics and Finance, directed by Professor Ulrike Malmendier.

The center’s mission is to support rigorous academic research in various areas of behavioral economics. We also pursue research in collaboration with researchers in neuroscience, cognitive science, and medicine. Faculty from the departments of Agricultural and Resource Economics, Economics, the Haas School of Business, the School of Public Health, the Goldman School of Public Policy, and the Information School are affiliated with the initiative.

The position offers direct engagement in new and exciting research opportunities and personal mentorship from faculty and other researchers on the team. Duties of Position: The scholar will be expected to collaborate with Professor Malmendier and coauthors Matthew Ridley (Warwick University) and Kate Orkin (Oxford University) on a new, funded research agenda studying how predictability and controllability shape economic responses to stress, particularly in labor markets.

Initial experiments are planned for implementation in the developing world (Kenya), and expansion to Western industrialized countries as well as neuroscientific evaluation in collaboration with Neuroscience colleagues are planned as well.

• Design Randomized Control Trials (RCT)
• Develop details of treatment - scripts, tasks, training local team
• Supervise RCT
• Collect and analyze data from RCT
• Write presentation slides
• Write draft on project Scholars will gain an expanded network of collaborators and become members of the UC Berkeley research community by actively participating in seminar series and taking advantage of various internal workshops to present and receive feedback on their work. The postdoctoral scholar will also have time for their own complementary research. Areas of research interest include, but are not limited to: -neuroscience foundations of modern models of belief formation and economic/financial decision-making mental health, trauma. -development economics, including the functioning of developing country labor markets and the economic lives of people experiencing poverty. -labor economics and household finance.