Experimental and Behavioural Economics Lab
A purpose-built space for experimental and behavioural research.
Facilities and software
The Lab provides a controlled environment for running behavioural and economic experiments. These are supported by specialist facilities and widely used experimental research software.
The Lab includes:
- 36 participant workstations with privacy partitions
- two experimenter workstations
- specialist experimental software for behavioural research and data collection, including:
- data analysis tools, including
- R
- Stata
Using the Lab
The Lab is used by a wide range of staff and students. It supports research collaboration across a range of disciplines. This gives users access to diverse perspectives and expertise.
Disciplines
Disciplines using the lab include:
- Economics
- Behavioural science
- Finance
- Business
- Political science
- Social psychology
Internal users
The Lab is open to individuals and groups from within the Business School, including:
- researchers
- lecturers
- students
External enquires
We also welcome enquiries from external academics working or teaching in economics. Expressions of interest should be sent to the academic lead, Dr Till Weber.
Examples of recent experiments
Recent studies carried out using the Lab demonstrate how controlled experimental settings can be used to explore complex economic and behavioural questions.
Valuing public goods under taxation
This experiment used controlled decision-making tasks to examine how people value public goods when funding is linked to taxation. By running the study in a laboratory setting, researchers were able to test whether introducing a “veil of ignorance” reduced bias in how participants assessed risks and benefits, producing clearer evidence on public preferences and fairness.
This paper reports on a decision-making experiment with 204 participants, which was conducted in the Lab.
How people enforce social norms
Using experimental designs run with participants in both India and the UK, this study explored when and why individuals choose to punish rule-breakers. The lab environment allowed researchers to compare behaviour across different social settings and test how cooperation and third-party sanctions emerge under controlled conditions, contributing to wider understanding of social norms and enforcement.
This paper reports on an experiment conducted in two societies (the UK and India). The UK experiment sessions were conducted with 254 participants in the Lab. Sessions were also conducted in India with 262 participants at the Behavioural Laboratory at Ashoka University in Sonipat, Haryana.
Take part in research
We recruit students to take part in our research.
Studies generally take between 30 and 120 minutes to complete. No special skills are required.
We will compensate you for your time.
To register your interest, please sign up via the link below.
Classroom experiments don’t simply teach behavioural economics, they demonstrate it. The result is more engagement, clearer understanding, and learning that students remember.