This seminar is hosted by the Oxford Martin Programme on Resource Stewardship

Speaker: Oliver Hauser is a Ph.D. student at Harvard University. His research applies insights from behavioural economics and social psychology to questions of cooperation and pro-sociality. He is also a Research Fellow at the UK Cabinet Office's Behavioural Insights Team and a research affiliate at the Program for Evolutionary Dynamics and the Behavioural Insights Group at Harvard.

Abstract: In this talk Hauser will present his research and results on intergenerational cooperation in a new social dilemma. Unlike in other public goods games, future generations cannot reciprocate actions made today. What mechanisms, then, can maintain cooperation with the future? To answer this question, Hauser and colleagues devise a new experimental paradigm, the 'Intergenerational Goods Game'. They show that the intergenerational resource is not sustained when decisions are made individually. This failure to cooperate with the future is driven primarily by only a minority of defectors. In contrast, when they introduced median democratic voting, they find that the resource is consistently sustained. Hauser will discuss the reasons for the success of the voting institution and how this impacts the design of public policies.

Venue: The Rainolds Room, Corpus Christi College