Who we are

Ernst Fehr has been Pro­fes­sor of Mi­cro­eco­nom­ics and Ex­per­i­men­tal Eco­nom­ics at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Zürich since 1994. He served as di­rec­tor of the In­sti­tute for Em­pir­i­cal Re­search in Eco­nom­ics and chair­man of the De­part­ment of Eco­nom­ics at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Zurich. He cur­rent­ly serves as di­rec­tor of the UBS In­ter­na­tion­al Cen­ter of Eco­nom­ics in So­ci­ety.

He has been a Glob­al Dis­tin­guished Pro­fes­sor at New York Uni­ver­si­ty since 2011 and was an af­fil­i­at­ed fac­ul­ty mem­ber of the De­part­ment of Eco­nom­ics at the Mass­a­chu­setts In­sti­tute of Tech­nol­o­gy from 2003 to 2011. He is a for­mer pres­i­dent of the Eco­nom­ic Sci­ence As­so­ci­a­tion and of the Eu­ro­pean Eco­nom­ic As­so­ci­a­tion, an hon­orary mem­ber of the Amer­i­can Acad­e­my of Arts and Sci­ences, and John Ken­neth Gal­braith Fel­low of the Amer­i­can Acad­e­my of Po­lit­i­cal and So­cial Sci­ences. He was re­cip­i­ent of the Mar­cel Benoist Prize in 2008 and the Got­tlieb Dut­tweil­er Prize in 2013. Ernst Fehr has nu­mer­ous pub­li­ca­tions in in­ter­na­tion­al top jour­nals. His re­search fo­cus­es on the prox­i­mate pat­terns and the evo­lu­tion­ary ori­gins of hu­man al­tru­ism and the in­ter­play be­tween so­cial pref­er­ences, so­cial norms, and strate­gic in­ter­ac­tions.

Fehr’s work is char­ac­ter­ized by the com­bi­na­tion of game-the­o­ret­ic tools with ex­per­i­men­tal meth­ods and the use of in­sights from eco­nom­ics, so­cial psy­chol­o­gy, so­ci­ol­o­gy, bi­ol­o­gy, and neu­ro­sci­ence for a bet­ter un­der­stand­ing of hu­man so­cial be­hav­ior.

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Guil­herme Lic­hand is an As­sis­tant Pro­fes­sor at the De­part­ment of Eco­nom­ics and Chair­man of the Cen­ter for Child Well-Be­ing and De­vel­op­ment at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Zurich. His re­search in­ter­ests in­clude De­vel­op­ment Eco­nom­ics, Po­lit­i­cal Econ­o­my, and Be­hav­io­ral Eco­nom­ics. Lic­hand uses lab-in-the-field ex­per­i­ments to study the im­pacts of pover­ty on de­ci­sion-mak­ing. Does the risk of a drought im­pair de­ci­sion-mak­ing, and can rain­fall in­sur­ance mit­i­gate this ef­fect? Does wor­ry­ing about be­ing poor af­fect par­ents’ will­ing­ness to in­vest in their chil­dren, and their abil­i­ty to pay at­ten­tion to whether chil­dren at­tend class­es? He also com­bines nat­ur­al ex­per­i­ments and ran­dom­ized con­trol tri­als to study cor­rup­tion and state ca­pac­i­ty. Is fight­ing cor­rup­tion good or bad for pub­lic ser­vice de­liv­ery? Does it mat­ter to au­dit bu­reau­crats or con­trac­tors? Can low-cost tech­nolo­gies in­crease bud­get ex­e­cu­tion by sup­port­ing pro­cure­ment of­fi­cials? Pro­fes­sor Lic­hand holds a PhD in Po­lit­i­cal Econ­o­my and Gov­ern­ment from Har­vard Uni­ver­si­ty, and has been ac­knowl­edged by MIT Tech­nol­o­gy Re­view as Brazil’s top un­der-35 so­cial in­no­va­tor in 2014.

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Oni­cio Leal is a post­doc­tor­al re­searcher at the Cen­ter for Child Well-be­ing and De­vel­op­ment at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Zurich. He holds a PhD in Pub­lic Health from Os­wal­do Cruz Foun­da­tion Brazil. He holds also a Mas­ter’s De­gree in Pub­lic Health and cer­ti­fi­ca­tions in Col­lec­tive Health, So­cial En­tre­pre­neur­ship, Fu­tur­ism and Ex­po­nen­tial Tech­nolo­gies. His re­search main­ly fo­cus­es on the ap­pli­ca­tion of dig­i­tal dis­ease de­tec­tion, ear­ly warn­ing sys­tems for epi­demics and dis­ease out­breaks, and so­cial epi­demi­ol­o­gy.

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Nicoló ob­tained a Mas­ter De­gree in In­ter­na­tion­al and De­vel­op­ment Eco­nom­ics at the Uni­ver­si­ties of Lou­vain and Na­mur - in Bel­gium. Af­ter near­ly a decade work­ing in de­vel­op­ment with no-prof­its and in­ter­na­tion­al or­ga­ni­za­tions such as UNDP, he joined the re­search or­ga­ni­za­tion In­no­va­tions for Pover­ty Ac­tion. Based in Burk­i­na Faso, he served as Coun­try Di­rec­tor for Fran­coph­o­ne West Africa for 5 years, over­see­ing a grow­ing port­fo­lio of field ex­per­i­ments and up to 35 per­ma­nent staff. As Re­search Di­rec­tor for the Cen­ter for Child Well-be­ing and De­vel­op­ment, Nicoló leads the co­or­di­na­tion of the Child De­vel­op­ment Study, a lon­gi­tu­di­nal pan­el study in Malawi. More­over, he over­sees re­search pro­to­cols and sup­ports CCWD re­searchers and stu­dents in con­ceiv­ing and de­vel­op­ing their re­search work.

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Be­fore join­ing the Zurich Grad­u­ate School of Eco­nom­ics, Juli­ette Thibaud stud­ied po­lit­i­cal sci­ences at Sci­ence Po Lille in France and eco­nom­ics at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Cam­bridge in the U.K. and worked on hu­man rights is­sues in Nepal from 2011 to 2012. She is in­ter­est­ed in ques­tions re­lat­ed to the ac­cess to pub­lic ser­vices and la­bor mar­ket of in­di­vid­u­als and com­mu­ni­ties who have been tra­di­tion­al­ly ex­clud­ed from them due to so­cioe­co­nom­ic or ge­o­graph­i­cal iso­la­tion. She wants to study the way this in­clu­sion can be fa­cil­i­tat­ed and the way it im­pacts a range of eco­nom­ic out­comes, such as ed­u­ca­tion or so­cial mo­bil­i­ty.

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Maite Deam­brosi is a PhD Can­di­date at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Zurich. She ob­tained her bach­e­lor’s de­gree in Eco­nom­ics at the Uni­ver­si­ty of South­ern Switzer­land, a mas­ter in Eco­nom­ics at Uni­ver­si­ty of Zurich and spent a year as an ex­change stu­dent at Uni­ver­si­ty Pom­peu Fab­ra in Barcelona. Her main re­search in­ter­ests lie in Mi­cro­eco­nom­ics, Be­hav­io­ral and De­vel­op­ment Eco­nom­ics.