Developmental Meritocracy

The John Gokongwei School of Management and Mission Lab Philippines invite you to a Brown Bag Session on "Developmental Meritocracy". Our presenter is Dr Pablo Brañas Garza, Editor in Chief of the Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics, Director of the Loyola Behavioral Lab, and Professor of Economics at the Universidad Loyola Andalucía.

This will be held on Tuesday, 29 October 2024 from 12:00 - 1:30PM at the Cabochan Room, SOM 307 and online via Zoom.

Please register here: https://bit.ly/jgsombrownbag29oct2024

Brief Description of the Topic:

A sample of 2,883 children and teenagers aged 5 to 18 in the United States and Spain participate in a third party dictator game where they can influence the rewards of the winner and the loser of a competition. We explore three methods for determining the competition’s winner (talent, effort, and luck) and two methods to allocate rewards (redistribution from winner to loser and addition to winner and loser). Participants are reluctant to transfer rewards from the winner to the loser, resulting in more meritocratic allocations in the redistribution scenario across all age groups. In contrast, the addition scenario exhibits strong age-related effects, with ex-post fairness peaking during middle school and then declining. These trends are consistent across populations and across socioeconomic backgrounds. Merit-based allocations are more frequent when participants compete in a task that requires talent. Allocation decisions are influenced by experience, which reduces the gap between redistribution and addition. They are also affected by perceived performance, personality traits, and affective processes.

About the Speaker:

Prof. Brañas-Garza joined Loyola Andalucia University as Professor of Behavioural Economics in March 2018. Previously he was Professor of Behavioural Economics at Middlesex University London (2012-18) and Professor of Economic Theory at the University of Granada (2009-12).
His research has been published in leading journals such us PNAS, Proc Royal Society B, Int Econ Rev, Eur Econ Rev, Games Econ Beh, Exp Econ, Evol Hum Beh, Biol Let, Persp Psych Science, J Conflict Res, Eco Letters, JEBO, J Beh Dec Mak, Jud Dec Mak, JMC&B, J Eco Psych or Nat Sc Rep.  Summary of citations (Google, Setp 2023): >5,600 citations, h=42. His research has been funded by the Spanish Ministry of Science, British ESRC, Fundación Ramón Areces, Andalucía Excellence Groups and AACID.

Currently, he is the Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Experimental and Behavioral Economics and member of ESRC Peer Review College (since 2015). Since 2022 he is member of the IRB Committee of the Spanish Ministry of Migrations and Social Affairs.

Previously, PBG served as President of the Society for the Advancement of Behavioral Economics (2016-2018). He was Academic Editor of PLoS ONE (2013-21) and Associate Editor of JBEE (2016-21). He has reviewed papers for many journals (AER, JEEA, EER, Nature, MSc, etc.) and research agencies (ANEP, COST, ESRC, ERC, ICREA, Swiss F, Leverhulme, FWO, etc.).

PBG has lead projects for Fundación La Caixa, COTEC, World Bank (DIME), Peruvian Government and launched capacity building programs for public servants from Argentina, Ghana, Tanzania, or Pakistan. In the last year, he coordinated a project for the Central American Bank of Economic Integration to develop a new index of multidimensional poverty. Currently he is leading a project to run experiments in high schools to inform teachers about their students’ abilities (and social cohesion/conflict).

PBG has supervised 16 PhD students (+ 4 ongoing). He was the director of the PhD Economics (Granada) and later at Middlesex University. He launched the London PhD workshop (founded by the ESRC) and since 2019 started the e3c Early Career Researchers Workshop. He founded the GLOBE research group at Granada and the LoyolaBehLAB at Loyola.

He published several books: Experimental Economics (Antoni Bosch: 2011), Experimental Economics I & II (with Antonio Cabrales, Palgrave: 2015), Imperfect Perception and Stochastic Choice (with John Smith, Cambridge University Press: 2024).

He has received several awards: Tom Bausch Best Paper Award (2021), Loyola Uni Research Prize (2019), PODER Innovation prize, Peru (2017), Granada University Young Researcher (2007) and three Sexenios (2014-2019, 2008-2013, 2002-2007).