Steven Bosworth
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+44 (0) 118 378 7126
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Associate Professor in Economics
- BESS Co-director
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Module Convener for EC146 & EC301
Areas of interest
Behavioural economics, experimental economics, cooperation, identity economics, endogenous determinants of social preferences.
Postgraduate supervision
I welcome PhD applications in the field of behavioural and experimental economics, but have a particular interest in supervising proposals which investigate:
- Human cooperation within and between organisations and the institutions that support it
- The economic determinants and consequences of social identity (e.g. gender, class, ethnicity, ideology).
Research centres and groups
Background
My research uses microeconomic theory and controlled laboratory experiments to investigate how context, motivation and the social environment influence human cooperation.
My published work has specifically examined how uncertainty about intentions can frustrate coordinated shifts to better practices, how the distribution of prosocial dispositions in society hinges on the prevalence of environments in which people are forced to compete, and how to think about the consequences of social fragmentation on wellbeing.
Before joining the University of Reading in 2017, I was a postdoctoral researcher at the Institute for the World Economy in Kiel, Germany. I earned my PhD from the University of Pittsburgh in 2013.
Academic qualifications
- PhD Economics, University of Pittsburgh, 2013
- MA Economics, University of Pittsburgh, 2010
- BSc Economics and Mathematics, Truman State University, 2008
Awards and honours
- Rebuilding Macroeconomics Social Cooperation Hub small grants 2019-2020 (£21,500)
- Young Scientists Program research grant, German-Israeli Foundation for Scientific Research and Development, 2016-2017 (20,000 EUR)