Kolba Café Behavioral Science in Development

Recent developments vividly illustrate the power of behavioral sciences to promote development and combat poverty, by explaining the decisions of individuals in such aspects as savings, investment, tax compliance, energy consumption, health and child rearing (World Development Report, 2015). In this respect, “Behavioural Insights (BIs) have progressively been recognised as a valuable input to policy-making by major international organisations, such as the European Commission (EC), the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) and the World Bank (European Insights to Applied Policy, 2016).” A few national governments either have established specialized teams to inform policy-making by BIs, or have called for national agencies or policy departments to use BIs.
The purpose of the talk is to provide an introduction to how behavioral sciences can be used for policy-making in the fields of taxation, health, environment and the like. Furthermore, we will present the results of a laboratory experiment conducted in Italy on how voters respond to electoral fraud with varying their participation rates.
We are looking forward to your participation.
Organizing Team:
Armenak Antinyan, Ph.D.
Vardan Baghdasaryan, Ph.D.
Aleksandr Grigoryan, Ph.D.
Knar Khachatryan, Ph.D.
More about the Team.
Dr. Antinyan is the research director at the Caucasus Research Resource Center-Armenia, an adjunct lecturer at the American University of Armenia and an affiliate at the Economics Department at the University of Erlangen-Nuremberg, Germany, where he was employed as a researcher from February, 2013 to September, 2015. Starting from September 2016 Armenak will undertake a tenure track assistant professorship in Behavioral and Experimental Economics at Tianjin University of Finance and Economics, China. He obtained his Ph.D. in Behavioral and Experimental Economics at the University of Venice, Italy. Prior to doctoral studies Dr. Antinyan received MA in Quantitative Economics from the University Paris 1 Pantheon-Sorbonne, France and the University of Venice, Italy.
Dr. Baghdasaryan is an assistant professor at the American University of Armenia. His past career includes position of Senior Consultant in a local consulting firm specialized in technical assistance advisory services to international donor organizations and Deputy Director at the Center of European Studies (EU funded project). Most recent major consulting projects: contribution to development of Armenia Development Strategy (ADS); Assistance to Tax Code development, including analysis of redistributive tax policies; Public Finance management reforms. His research interests are in the field of political economy and development economics. A recent research project analyzes strategic and behavioral responses by voters to electoral fraud in a lab experiment. Dr. Baghdasaryan holds PhD in Public Economics from Catholic University of Milan, Italy.
Dr. Grigoryan is an associate professor and the Chair of Master of Business Administration Program at the American University of Armenia (AUA). He holds PhD in Economics from University Turin and Masters in Economics from Institute for Advanced Studies, Vienna. His past career includes junior economist at the Ministry of Finance of the Republic of Armenia (RA) and senior researcher at the Central Bank of RA, prior to the joining the AUA on a full time basis. Dr. Grigoryan’s research area includes topics from development economics, such as inequality, poverty and migration. Parallel to academic research, he provides economic consultancy services to international organizations on mining, environmental issues, monetary policy and more.
Dr. Khachatryan is a Professor of Marketing and Management and BA in Business Program Chair at the College of Business and Economics, AUA. She is an affiliated researcher with Knowledge, Technology and Organization (KTO) research center, SKEMA Business School (France). Her research centers on microfinance and development finance, in particular on microfinance institutions performance and outreach, service portfolios and incentive mechanisms in contracts.
Venue: The Alex and Marie Manoogian Hall