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Name
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Department
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Topic
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Dr Adam Oliver
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Social Policy
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Testing the ultimate game with earned money
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The ultimatum game has produced one of the most robust findings in behavioural economics, and appears to show that people are often motivated by reciprocity, rather than by the standard rational choice theory assumption of selfish egoism. However, the ultimatum game is typically undertaken with money that is simply given to respondents, an occurrence that relatively rarely occurs in reality. The main objective of my study is to test whether the usual results of the ultimatum game hold up when money is instead earned, by asking respondents to construct Lego models, rather than given to them for ‘free’.
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Alessandro Tavoni, Former Associate Professorial Research Fellow
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Grantham Institute
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Peer effects, rewards, and image concerns in energy decisions (PRICED)
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The PRICED project seeks to understand the role of social rewards and peer effects in encouraging private contribution to the public good in the context of green energy demand. Alessandro Tavoni and Greer Gosnell of the Grantham Research Institute (LSE), together with Stefano Carattini (Yale University), will work in partnership with a green energy supplier to study the effects of increasing the visibility of otherwise invisible pro-environmental behaviours.
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Professor Anne Power
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LSE Housing &Communities
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Tenants in action: how small scale voluntary community action brings public benefit
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LSE Housing and Communities’ research project will explore the difference that tenants’ voluntary action can make in low-income neighbourhoods. As local authority budgets get tighter, NHS resources are increasingly stretched, and charities struggle to find resources to meet increasing need, tenant volunteers can play a vital role in enhancing the common good and improving the wellbeing of their local communities. The project will involve 20 semi-structured phone interviews with a cross-section of social housing tenants and 10 follow-up visits to local community projects, led and run by tenants. It will provide qualitative accounts of the hard-to-measure benefits of tenant action; quantify the number of direct beneficiaries of tenants’ action; develop a “financial value” on tenant volunteering; and explore wider and more indirect benefits that contribute broadly to the common good.
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Dr Julia Morley
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Accounting
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The impact of 'impact': the effect of social impact reporting on staff identity and motivation at UK social enterprises and charities
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In this study, I will conduct interviews with staff at UK social enterprises and charities to examine how the use of social impact reporting affects their motivation. This research was prompted by anecdotal evidence suggesting that some staff might find financialized and business-like descriptions of their activities demotivating as these measures fail to express the moral and emotional components of their work.
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Mary Martin Senior, Research Fellow
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LSE Ideas (International Relations)
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Private sector contributions to Columbia's peace process
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In the wake of a 2016 peace agreement to end more than 50 years of civil conflict in Colombia, 'Private sector contributions to Colombia's peace process' will examine the structures which encourage private companies to take part in the country’s transition to peace.
Through dialogues with companies, communities and public officials, the project will analyse how the peace process articulates a new social and political role for companies, as well as private sector responses to the challenge of public-private collaboration in implementing the peace agreement. The aim of the project is to contribute to developing understandings and typologies of actions by private actors for public good in a post-conflict setting.
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Professor Mike Savage
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Sociology
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Art, inequality and social change
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The art world has sought to democratise artistic display over the past two decades, to limit the association with ‘highbrow’ culture and to encourage diversity in artistic form, and to encourage a wider range of audiences to engage with art. However, although these democratising moves have been effective in several respects, there has been less attention to the way that the rise of economic inequality, and the accumulation of wealth and capital might be an issue for artistic exploration and curation. We will be conducting a small scale project to explore how the practices of curators and artists in a series of leading London galleries are aware of current economic challenges associated with inequality, and how they understand the dynamics of contemporary social change. We will conduct a series of interviews with the curators of public art galleries and private galleries, and with a number of artists who have been identified as exploring current social issues. We expect to find that artists are developing important repertoires for comprehending current challenges and will use our findings to encourage a better understanding from social scientists of these innovations, and to enhance the public significance of art for current debates.
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Professor Naufel Vilcassim
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Management
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International Coaching via Skype: Connecting Business Professionals and Entrepreneurs Across Markets and Examining the Impact on Small Business Growth in Uganda
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In this research, we evaluate the impact and effectiveness of an innovative non-profit organisation that seeks to improve societal outcomes in emerging markets by stimulating growth among small scale enterprises. Grow Movement (GROW) links motivated entrepreneurs with higher growth potential in emerging markets with volunteer business professionals around the world who provide free, one-on-one coaching to entrepreneurs remotely via Skype, mobile phone and email. We will use a randomized controlled trial to rigorously evaluate the impact and effectiveness of GROW’s “remote international coaching” programme on the economic and social outcomes of 1,500 micro and small entrepreneurs in Uganda. Thus, through this project we aim to better understand and enhance the role that private actors (in this case, the volunteer coaches, as well as the entrepreneurs themselves) can play in stimulating economic growth in emerging markets.
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Dr Richard Perkins
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Geography & Environment
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Standardising green bonds: actors, approaches and influences
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Green bonds have recently emerged as a high-profile financial vehicle for private actors to contribute to public goals of climate mitigation and environmental protection. Within the context of debates about environmental governance, this project seeks to understand the evolution of private (and public) standards governing the transparency and environmental integrity of green bonds, and the influences which have shaped their configuration and usage.
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