Rosemarie Nagel

Universitat Pompeu Fabra

Social & Behavioural Sciences

Rosemarie Nagel received her PhD in economics in 1994 from the University of Bonn with Reinhard Selten as her advisor. In 1994-1995 she was post doc with Al Roth, University Pittsburgh. Since 1995 she has been working in the Department of Economics and Business in Universitat Pompeu Fabra; in 2006 she was promoted to full professor and in 2007 she joined ICREA as a research professor. Her main research is in experimental and behavioral economics, especially in macro economic experiments and in neuro economics. She has published in the American Economic Review, Econometrica, Review of Economic Studies, Strategic Management Journal,, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), Nature Human Behavior, Financial Times, Spektrum der Wissenschaft, etc.


Research interests

I work in experimental economics focusing on simplified economic situations of risk, coordination and competition. I develop descriptive models departing from game theory and decision theory, introducing knowledge from psychology and neurosciences related to theory of mind. I link behavioural data created in experiments with brain activity gained through functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) or eye-tracking data co-working with cognitive scientists, neuro-scientists, biologists, and psychologists. Furthermore, with other experimental economists and macro theorists I promote the interaction between the two groups with summer schools, workshops, and research using experimental tools to tackle macro questions. Finally, with colleagues from UPF we integrate economic experiments as teaching tools in undergraduate courses to better understand the mathematical models and show the relationship between students’ own behavior in economic experiments and theoretical outcomes.

Selected publications

– Mauersberger F & Nagel R 2018, “Levels of Reasoning in Beauty Contest Games: A Unifying Framework for Economic Heterogeneity” In Handbook of Computational Economics. Vol. 4, eds. Cars Hommes and Blake LeBaron, Chapter 10, pp 541 – 634. Elsevier.

Nagel R, Brovelli A, Heinemann F & Coricelli G 2018, ‘Neural mechanisms mediating degrees of strategic uncertainty‘, Social Cognitive And Affective Neuroscience, vol.13, no.1, pp 52 – 62.

– Reutskaja E, Lindner A, Nagel R, Andersen RA & Camerer CF 2018 Choice overload reduces neural signatures of choice set value in dorsal striatum and anterior cingulate cortex”, Nature Human Behaviour, vol. 2, no.12, pp 925 – 935.

– Levine SS, Bernard M & Nagel R 2018, ‘Strategic intelligence: The cognitive capability to anticipate competitor behaviour (vol 12, pg 2390, 2017)‘, Strategic Management Journal, vol. 39, no. 2, pp 527 – 527.

– Chierchia G, Nagel R & Coricelli G 2018, ‘Betting “on nature” or “betting on others”: anti-coordination induces uniquely high levels of entropy.‘ Scientific Reports vol. 23, no. 8(1):3514.


Selected research activities

– Keynote speaker in 24th International Conference Computing in Economics and Finance (ICEF) 2018 Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore-

– Coorganization of 11th BesLab Experimental Economics Summer School in Macroeconomics and 9th international workshop on Theoretical and Experimental Macroeconomics together with Gabriele Camera (Chapman University), John Duffy, University of Pittsburgh, Frank Heinemann, TU-Berlin, and Shyam Sunder (Yale University).

– Teaching outside of economics departments: Neuro economics lectures in undergraduate program of Human Biology (UPF),  in master of Neuro marketing (Universitat Autonoma Barcelona), in master course of Social Cognitive Neuroscience  (Master of Brain of Cognition, UPF); experimental economics to highschool students  (for ESCOLAB and Bojos per la sciencia).