Professor Shachar Kariv is a first year assistant professor of Economics here at UC Berkeley. His main areas of interest are microeconomics theory, behavioral economics and experimental economics.

When it comes to doing research, Professor Kariv starts off by focusing on an existing economic theory. Along with economic theory often comes certain necessary assumptions such as all economic agents are rational and seek to maximize their payoffs. To test the theory, Professor Kariv conducts experiments that involve “playing games in a controlled environment”. The experiments allow him to observe social learning behavior of the participants. The results obtained are fed back to the theory and he seeks to modify or extend the theory to include behavioral biasness.

Professor Kariv has previously done research on the phenomena of ‘herd’ behavior. He noticed examples of such behavior in many areas including technological adoption and asset market decisions. An interesting aspect of ‘herd’ behavior is that individuals can have different sets of information, but end up making the same decisions. Professor Kariv conducted experiments based on various sequential decision making models. He points out that while experiments are unable to exactly reproduce realistic environments, they have the ability to show that the models they were based on can generate precise predictions. In reality, the situation is often a combination of the environments simulated in the experiments. To him, a main advantage of utilizing experimental data in research is that it offers a clean test of economic theory since we can control the information participants receive and other variables.

A new topic of interest that Professor Kariv is planning to conduct research on is the effect of our social networks on the decisions we make. He has already begun conducting experiments on this new topic and hopes to combine his research on networks with his previous research on various aspects of behavioral economics.

Professor Kariv was very approachable and enthusiastic about sharing his research. He also expressed interest in being a thesis advisor for economics undergraduates. More importantly, his noticeable passion for his research definitely made this interview a fulfilling experience for me.