The economics of cooperative behaviour. Free-riding and rent-seeking, such as tax avoidance and nepotism, are group-undermining activities that societies including Australia continuously struggle with. The aim of this project is to develop a fuller understanding of how to protect human groups from these socially damaging group-related behaviours. Drawing on a conceptual grounding that combines ideas from across social science, the project aims to implement a suite of economic experiments to deve ....The economics of cooperative behaviour. Free-riding and rent-seeking, such as tax avoidance and nepotism, are group-undermining activities that societies including Australia continuously struggle with. The aim of this project is to develop a fuller understanding of how to protect human groups from these socially damaging group-related behaviours. Drawing on a conceptual grounding that combines ideas from across social science, the project aims to implement a suite of economic experiments to develop a view of humans' cooperative behaviour that unites several strands of economics literature and offers new insights about how institutions that counter free-riding and rent-seeking arise and are maintained.Read moreRead less
Incentivizing Attendance and Performance at School: A Field Experiment. This project aims to develop and evaluate an incentive-based program to increase the school attendance and performance of Indigenous students to help alleviate current inequalities between Indigenous and non-indigenous Australians. Only 43 per cent of Indigenous Australians graduate from high school compared to 78 per cent for non-Indigenous Australians. The study plans to investigate whether high value rewards (e.g. driving ....Incentivizing Attendance and Performance at School: A Field Experiment. This project aims to develop and evaluate an incentive-based program to increase the school attendance and performance of Indigenous students to help alleviate current inequalities between Indigenous and non-indigenous Australians. Only 43 per cent of Indigenous Australians graduate from high school compared to 78 per cent for non-Indigenous Australians. The study plans to investigate whether high value rewards (e.g. driving licence instruction) are effective in incentivising year 11 and 12 students. It also aims to examine whether the way incentives are provided — ex-post as traditionally done or ex-ante in the form of a trust-based contract — increase high school completion rates of Indigenous students where previous incentive schemes have failed.Read moreRead less