题目：An Economic Analysis of Mortality Salience

报告人：李汛   副教授  武汉大学经济与管理学院

主持人：金樟峰  博士后  浙江大学经济学院

时间：2019年12月6日   星期五    12:00-13:30

地点：浙江大学玉泉校区经济学院418室  

Abstract:

Life is limited while people are often unaware of it. This paper investigates the impact of mortality salience on social preferences. A randomized lab experiment shows that after priming with the fact of limited life, subjects in the treatment group discounted more on today than near future, gave more in the Andreoni-Miller dictator game when the price of giving is low, and became more generous in the jealousy game. To explain the mechanism, we propose a theoretical model which shows that changing time preference is one channel through which mortality salience affects social preference. More specifically, priming of limited life makes subjects discount more on the today, therefore promotes prosociality. This effect increases with the price of giving. Our experimental data validated our theory. Finally, we further show that the priming did not change subjects’ mood, while it indeed altered their mortality awareness, which strengthens our findings. This paper potentially provides implications for the function of religion and some implementation of anti-corruption.

Introduction:

李汛，武汉大学经济与管理学院副教授，主要研究领域为行为经济学与健康经济学。成果发表在 《JAMA Internal Medicine》《Economics & Human Biology》 《Journal of Consumer Behavior》等国际学术期刊，主持国家自然科学基金一项，同时担任《Global Health Research and Policy》杂志编委，以及 《AEJ：Applied Economics》，《中国工业经济》等杂志匿名审稿人。

CRPE秘书处
2019-12-3