Simon Gaechter (University of Nottingham), 30 April 2018, 4:30pm, NUBS 1.01

Speaker: Simon Gaechter, University of Nottingham 

Title: "Revealing the economic consequences of group cohesion" (with Chris Starmer and Fabio Tufano)

Date & Time: 30th of April 2018 (Monday), 4:30-5:45 pm

Venue:  Newcastle University Business School, room 1.11

Abstract:

We introduce the concept of “group cohesion” to capture the economic consequences of ubiquitous social relationships in group production. We measure group cohesion, adapting the “oneness scale” from psychology. A comprehensive program of new experiments reveals the considerable economic impact of cohesion: higher cohesion groups are significantly more likely to achieve Pareto-superior outcomes in classic weak-link coordination games. We show that effects of cohesion are economically large, robust, and portable. We identify social preferences as a primary mechanism explaining the effects of cohesion. Our results provide proof of concept for group cohesion as a productive new tool of economic research. 

Last modified: Mon, 30 Apr 2018 08:21:03 BST