Nathan Berg is Associate Professor of economics at University of Otago in Dunedin, New 
Zealand. Berg has published numerous articles and chapters in the field of behavioral economics, appearing in Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization, Psychological Review, Social Choice and Welfare and Contemporary Economic Policy. Berg was a Fulbright Scholar in 2003 and Visiting Research Scientist at the Max Planck Institute-Berlin in the 2000s. He was a Visiting Foreign Scholar at University of Osaka in 2008 and 2009. His research has been cited in Financial Times, Business Week, Canada’s National Post, The Village Voice, The Advocate, Science News, Slate and the Atlantic Monthly. He was awarded a Ph.D. (with honors) in economics and MA (with honors) in mathematics from University of Kansas in 2001.
Berg’s research focuses on consumer behavior, financial decision making, medical decision making, choices about food and exercise, the economics of creativity, and the measurement of wellbeing. His work emphasizes decision processes that people actually use (in contrast with the prescriptions of standard economic theory) and their potential to perform well by ignoring what textbooks, decision theorists and economists typically define as rationality.
Selected Papers of interest:
- Berg, N. and Preston, K. (2017), Willingness to pay for local food?: Consumer preferences and shopping behavior at Otago Farmers Market. Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice 103, 343-361. [A*].
- Berg, N. and Kim, J.Y. (2016), Equilibrium national border and its stability, Prague Economic Papers 25(6), 637-654. [migration flows are one of our key sustainability issues in my view.]
- Berg, N. and Kim, J.Y. (2015), Quantity restrictions with imperfect enforcement in an over-used commons: Permissive regulation to reduce over-use?, Journal of Institutional and Theoretical Economics 171(2), 308-329. [A] [permissive rules and regulation can lead to better aggregate behavior than strict rules that are imperfectly enforced. Relates directly to sustainability policies that set aggregate emissions limits for example or road use or fishery use, etc.]
- Berg, N. (2014), Success from satisficing and imitation: Entrepreneurs’ location choice and implications of heuristics for local economic development, Journal of Business Research 67(8), 1700-1709. [A] [we should have a conversation about good-enough satisficing regarding sustainability rather than use the language of “optimisation” in my view.]
- Berg, N. (2014), The consistency and ecological rationality schools of normative economics: Singular versus plural metrics for assessing bounded rationality, Journal of Economic Methodology 21(4), 375-395. [B] [sustainability and rationality are not ideas that can be captured or measured with a single number. We need a spirit of methodological pluralism and multiple sustainability indicators, in my view.]
- Berg, N. (2014), The consistency and ecological rationality schools of normative economics: Singular versus plural metrics for assessing bounded rationality, Journal of Economic Methodology 21(4), 375-395. [B] [sustainability and rationality are not ideas that can be captured or measured with a single number. We need a spirit of methodological pluralism and multiple sustainability indicators, in my view.]
- Berg, N., Hoffrage, U., and Abramczuk, K. (2010) Fast Acceptance by Common Experience: FACE-recognition in Schelling’s model of neighborhood segregation, Judgment and Decision Making 5(5), 391-410. [physical space and proximity for face-to-face interaction are important for NZ sustainability and have implications about migration flows which are our number one sustainability issue in my view.]
- Berg, N. and Hoffrage, U. (2008) Rational ignoring with unbounded cognitive capacity, Journal of Economic Psychology 29, 792-809. [A] [Knowing what to ignore is as important or more so than knowing what to pay attention to. Rational ignoring and focusing on most important sustainability metrics, after choosing them judiciously, would be one stream of analysis for me to work on jointly with others in our group.]
- Berg, N. and Gigerenzer, G. (2007) Psychology implies paternalism?: Bounded rationality may reduce the rationale to regulate risk-taking, Social Choice and Welfare 28(2), 337-359. [A] [Over-regulation of risk-taking can have untindended consequences. We might want to have a group talking about how to evaluate what sweet spot might be for too much v too little.]
- Berg, N. and Maital, S. (2007) Tailoring globalization to national needs and wellbeing: One size never fits all, Global Business and Economics Review 9(2/3), 319-334. [Heterogenous national policies may be our friend and perfect harmonization of global standards can block discovery of superior policies by means of experimentation across countries. We should learn from best practices rather than insist on one single practice.]
- Berg, N. (2006) A simple Bayesian procedure for sample size selection in an audit of property value appraisals, Real Estate Economics 34(1), 133-155. [A] [ideas in this paper would find application in any periodic auditing of sustainability outcomes or indicators.]
- Berg, N. and Lien, D. (2005) Does society benefit from investor overconfidence in the ability of financial market experts?, Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization 58, 95-116. [A*] [Unintended consequences from trying to force people’s beliefs to all coincide around one version of the truth. Heterogenous beliefs can provide numerous social benefits. Therefore, we should talk about an ecology of beliefs about sustainability rather than aim for one singular truth about sustainability.
- Berg, N. (2003) Normative behavioral economics, Journal of Socio-Economics 32, 411-427. [B] [this is first paper published to coin phrase “normative behavioural economics” and argue that psychology and economics has implications for public policy.
