A U of T Scarborough economics professor is the recipient of a prestigious grant from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation to study the behavioural welfare economics of how nudges affect financial decision making.
Sandro Ambuehl is an assistant professor in the Department of Management at the University of Toronto Scarborough, with a cross-appointment to the Business Economics area at the University's Rotman School of Management. He joined the University in 2016 after completing a PhD at Stanford University. He also holds a B.S. in Mathematics and a Licentiate in Economics, both from the University of Zurich.
Prof. Ambuehl will receive $474,606 (US) over the three year project and will work jointly with B. Douglas Bernheim, who is the Edward Ames Edmonds Professor of Economics and Chair of the Department of Economics at Stanford University.
Prof. Ambuehl's research and teaching interests include behavioural and experimental economics. One of his areas of research include concerns designing policies for the exchange of goods about which people have strong ethical intuitions, as is the case, for example, with living organ donation, or when incentive systems place a price on the natural environment.
In another line of research, he studies what policies help people make good financial decisions. He addresses these questions using a combination of controlled experiments and economic theory. His research has been featured in the popular press, including the Washington Post, the Financial Times, and the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung.