Professor Nathan Berg

Ph.D. University of Kansas

Tel +64 3 479 8648
Email nathan.berg@otago.ac.nz
Room 610a, 6th Floor, Otago Business School

Dr Berg specializes in behavioral economics. He teaches microeconomics, financial economics, psychology and economics, business statistics and econometrics. In 2014, Berg received a 156,000 AUD grant with Toby Handfield (Monash University) to collect experimental data and produce new theoretical findings as part of the project: "Pathologies of Moral Cognition." Berg was invited to become a member of the International Social Science Council (United Nations) Food Futures Network in 2013. Since moving to University of Otago in 2012, Berg has published 15 new scholarly works.

Berg's articles in the field of behavioral economics appear in journals such as Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization, Psychological Review, and Social Choice and Welfare and his joint work with the Center for Adaptive Behavior and Cognition at the Max Planck Institute-Berlin is published by Oxford University Press. Berg serves as Associate Editor for Global Economics and Management Review (Elsevier) and is an Associate Editor for Review of Behavioral Economics. He sits on the Editorial Boards of Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly Journal of Socio-Economics) and Global Business and Economics Review. Berg was a Fulbright Scholar in 2003 and Visiting Research Scientist at the Max Planck Institute-Berlin in 2005 and at Osaka University in 2008 and 2009. His research has been cited in the Financial Times, Business Week, Canada's National Post, The Village Voice, The Advocate and Atlantic Monthly.

Before becoming an economist, Berg recorded and toured internationally with jazz trumpeter Maynard Ferguson. He performed with Clark Terry, John Scofield, Alan Broadbent, Stephen Scott, Burnadette Peters, Larry Goldings, Bill Stewart, Christy Moore, and many others. His songwriting was featured in the 2012 feature film Coin De Rue. He performs regularly in Dunedin.

Nathan's CV

Read Nathan Berg's CV

Teaching responsibilities

• ECON318 Behavioural Economics

Selected publications

Berg, N., Kim, J.Y. (2021) Why is Parochialism Prevalent?: An Evolutionary Approach, Journal of Economic Interaction & Coordination [B]

Berg, N., Kim, J.Y. and Park, J. (2021), Why do firms sell gift cards although consumers prefer cash? Economic Modelling 96, 379-388. [A]

Berg, N., Kim, J.Y., Seon, I. (2021), A performance-based payment: Signaling the quality of a credence good, Managerial and Decision Economics. [B]

Akhtaruzzaman, M., Berg, N., Lien, D. and Wu, Ying (2021), News coverage of Confucius Institutes in the pre-Trump Era. Economic and Political Studies. 10.1080/20954816.2020.1870025

Berg, N., Boyle, Z., Clink, R., Cummings, S., Pirini J. (2020), Entrepreneurship Nurturing Organisations (ENOs) foster business growth and well-being [with foreword by the Minister of Economic Development]. NZ Entrepreneur (Sept. 11, 2020).

Berg, N. and Kim, J.Y. (2020), Should refusal to sell be illegal? Australian Economic Papers 59(1), 1–12. [B]

Berg, N. and Watanabe, Y. (2020), Conservation of behavioral diversity: Nudging, paternalism-induced monoculture, and the social value of heterogeneous beliefs and behaviors. Mind and Society 19, 103–120.

Berg, N. (2020), Against nudging: Simon-inspired behavioral law and economics founded on ecological rationality. In Viale, R. (Ed.) Routledge Handbook of Bounded Rationality. London: Routledge.

Berg, N. and Kim, J.Y. (2019), A good advisor. Bulletin of Economic Research 71(3), 558-572. [B]

Berg, N. (2018), Decentralization mislaid: On New Paternalism and skepticism toward experts. Review of Behavioural Economics 5(3-4), 361-387. [new journal edited by Barkley Rosser, as of 2017, in the top 14.5% of journals (#329 out of 2262) using RePEc's recursive-discounted measure]

Berg, N. and Kim, J.Y. (2018), Plea Bargaining with multiple defendants and its deterrence effect. International Review of Law and Economics 55, 58-70. [B]

Berg, N. and Kim, J.Y. (2018), Free expression and defamation. Law, Probability and Risk 17(3), 201–223. [new journal, Oxford University Press]

Berg, N. and Kim, J.Y. (2018), Price discrimination in public healthcare. Australian Economic Papers 57(2), 181-192. [B]

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*].

Akhtaruzzaman, A., Berg, N. and Lien, D. (2017), Confucius Institutes and FDI flows from China to Africa. China Economic Review 44, 241-252. [A]

Akhtaruzzaman, A., Berg, N. and Hajzler, C. (2017), Expropriation risk and FDI in developing countries: Does return of capital dominate return on capital?. European Journal of Political Economy 49, 84-107. [A]

Berg, N., Prakhya, S., and Ranganathan, K. (2017), A satisficing approach to eliciting risk preferences. Journal of Business Research 82, 127-140. [A]

Berg, N. (2017) “Smart People's Rational Mistakes,” In Altman, M. (ed). Handbook of Behavioral Economics and Smart Decision-Making: Rational Decision-Making Within the Bounds of Reason, Edward Elgar Publishing.

Berg, N. and Kim, J.Y. (2016), Equilibrium national border and its stability, Prague Economic Papers 25(6), 637-654.

Kim, J.Y. and Berg, N. (2017), Reexamining the Schmalennsee Effect. Economics: The Open-Access,Open-Assessment E-Journal. [B]

Berg, N and Gabel, T. (2017), Did tax cuts on earned income reduce Social Assistance participation in Canada?. Australian Tax Forum 32(1) 2017. [A]

Akhtaruzzaman, A., Berg, N. and Hajzler, C. (2017), Return Of Capital Dominates Return On Capital?: FDI in Developing Countries. European Journal of Political Economy. [A]

Akhtaruzzaman, A., Berg, N. and Lien, D. (2017), Confucius Institutes and FDI flows from China to Africa. China Economic Review. [A]

Berg, N., El-Komi, Mohammad, and Kim, Jeong-Yoo (2016), The puzzle of uniform standards and market segmentation among Islamic banks. Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization 132, 39-49. [A*]

Berg, N. and Gabel, T. (2017), Who Was Affected by New Welfare Reform Strategies?: Microdata Estimates from Canada. Applied Economics 49(14), 1395-1413. DOI:10.1080/00036846.2016.1218428 [A]

Berg, N. and Nelson, T. (2016), Pregnancy and dropout: Effects of family, neighborhood and high school characteristics on girls' fertility and dropout status. Population Research and Policy Review 35(6), 757-789. [A]

Berg, N and Gabel, T. (2017), Did tax cuts on earned income reduce Social Assistance participation in Canada?. Australian Tax Forum 32(1) 2017. [A]

Kim, J.Y., Lee, M.H. and Berg, N. Peak-load pricing in duopoly. Economic Modelling. [A]

Lim, Y., Kim, J.Y., and Berg, N. (2015), Price asymmetry revisited from a marketing perspective. Economic Modelling 49, 314–319.

Berg, N. and Kim, Jeong-Yoo Harsh norms and screening for loyalty. Bulletin of Economic Research. [B]

Berg, N., Biele, G. and Gigerenzer, G. Consistent Bayesians are no more accurate than non-Bayesians: Economists surveyed about PSA. Review of Behavioral Economics (ROBE)

Berg, N. and Kim, Jeong-Yoo (2014), Prohibition of Riba and Gharar: A signaling and screening explanation?, Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization 103, 146-159.

Berg, N. and Gabel, T. (2015), Did Canadian welfare reform work?: The effects of new reform strategies on Social Assistance participation, Canadian Journal of Economics 48(2), 494-528.

Kim, Jeong-Yoo and Berg, N. (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.

Bento, P., Nikolaeva, R., Simaens, A., Berg, N. and Lengler, J. (2015), Why Global Economics and Management Review?, Global Economics and Management Review.

Berg, N. (2014) The consistency and ecological rationality schools of normative economics: Singular versus plural metrics for assessing bounded rationality 21(4), Journal of Economic Methodology 21(4), 375-395.

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.

Monti M., Pelligra V., Martignon L., and Berg N. (2014), Retail investors and financial advisors: New evidence on trust and advice taking heuristics, Journal of Business Research 67(8), 1749-1757.

Berg, N. (2015), “Gerd Gigerenzer,” In Altman, M. (ed.), Real World Decision Making: An Encyclopedia of Behavioral Economics. Santa Barbara: Praeger, ABC-CLIO.

Berg, N., Abramczuk, K., and Hoffrage, U. (2013) Schelling's neighborhood segregation model with FACE-Recognition, in Hertwig, R., Hoffrage, U., & The ABC Research Group. Simple Heuristics in a Social World. New York: Oxford University Press, pp. 225–257.

Hertwig, R, Hoffrage, U., & The ABC Research Group* (2013). Simple Heuristics in a Social World. New York: Oxford University Press. (*includes N Berg)

Bennis, W., Katsikopolous, K., Goldstein, D. and Dieckmann, A., and Berg, N. (2012) Designed to fit minds: Institutions and ecological rationality, In Todd, P.M , Gigerenzer, G. and ABC Research Group, Ecological Rationality: Intelligence in the World. New York: Oxford University Press, pp. 409-427.

Todd, P. M., Gigerernzer, G., & the ABC Research Group* (2012). Ecological Rationality: Intelligence in the World. Oxford University Press. (*includes N Berg)

Monti, M., Martingon, L., Gigerenzer, G., and Berg, N. (2012) How do common investors behave? Information search and portfolio choice among bank customers and university students, Mind and Society 11(2), 203-233.

Berg, N., Jha, N., and Murdoch, J. C. (2012) Risk in housing markets, In Smith, S. (Ed.) International Encyclopedia of Housing and Home, Elsevier, pp. 193-203.

Kameda, T., Tsukasaki, T., Hastie, R., and Berg, N. (2011). Democracy under uncertainty: The wisdom of crowds and the free-rider problem in group decision making. Psychological Review 118, 76-96.

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.

Berg, N. and Hoffrage, U. (2010) Compressed environments: Unbounded optimizers should sometimes ignore information, Minds and Machines 20(2), 259-275.

Berg, N. and Gigerenzer, G. (2010) As-if behavioral economics: Neoclassical economics in disguise?, History of Economic Ideas 18(1), 133-166. [Cited in Financial Times, January 28, 2011, and Slate, January 30, 2011.]

Berg, N. (2010) Behavioral economics, In Free, R. C. (Ed.) 21st Century Economics: A Reference Handbook, Vol. 2. Los Angeles: Sage, pp. 861-872.

Berg, N. and Lien, D. (2009) Sexual orientation and self-reported lying, Review of Economics of the Household 7(1), 83-104.

Berg N. (2009) Experiments to generate new data about school choice, Journal of School Choice 3(4), 397-413.

Berg N. and Merrifield, J. (2009) Illusive competition in school reform: Comment on Merrifield's `Imagined Evidence and False Imperatives,' and Merrifield Reply, Journal of School Choice 3(3), 290-306.

Finin, T., Joshi, A., Kargupta, H., Yesha, Y., Sachs, J., Bertino, E., Ninghui Li, Clifton, C., Spafford, G., Thuraisingham, B., Kantarcioglu, M., Bensoussan, A., Berg, N., Khan, L., Jiawei Han, Cheng Xiang Zhai, Sandhu, R., Shouhuai Xu, Massaro, J., and Adamic, L. (2009) Assured information sharing life cycle, Intelligence and Security Informatics, ISI '09 IEEE International Conference on 8-11 June 2009, pp. 307- 309.

Monti, M., Martignon, L., Gigerenzer, G., & Berg, N. (2009). The impact of simplicity on financial decision-making. In N. A. Taatgen & H. van Rijn (Eds.), Proceedings of the 31st Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society (pp. 1846-1851). Austin: Cognitive Science Society.

Berg, N. and Hoffrage, U. (2008) Rational ignoring with unbounded cognitive capacity, Journal of Economic Psychology 29, 792-809.

Berg, N. and Faria, J. (2008), Negatively correlated author seniority and the number of acknowledged people: Name-recognition as a signal of scientific merit, Journal of Socio-Economics 37, 1234-1247.

Berg, N. and Murdoch, J. (2008) Access to grocery stores in Dallas, International Journal of Behavioural and Healthcare Research 1(1), 22-37.

Berg, N. (2008) Review of Microeconomics: Behavior, Institutions, and Evolution, by Bowles, S., in Journal of Socio-Economics 37(1), 444-447.

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.

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.

Berg, N., Gu, A. and Lien, D. (2007) Dynamic correlation: A tool for hedging house-price risk?, Journal of Real Estate Portfolio Management 13(1),17-28.

Berg, N. (2007) Behavioural economics, business decision making and applied policy analysis, Global Business and Economics Review 9 (2/3), 123-125.

Berg, N. (2007) It shouldn't take a road trip to shop, Dallas Morning News, November 15, p. 21A.

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.

Berg, N. and Lien, D. (2006) Same-sex sexual behavior: U.S. frequency estimates from survey data with simultaneous misreporting and non-response, Applied Economics 38(7), 757-769.

Berg, N. and Gigerenzer, G. (2006) Peacemaking among inconsistent rationalities? In Engel, C. and Daston, L. (Eds.), Is There Value in Inconsistency?, Baden-Baden: Nomos, pp. 421-433.

Berg, N. (2006) Behavioral labor economics, In Altman, M., ed., Handbook of Contemporary Behavioral Economics, M.E. Sharpe, New York, pp. 457-478.

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.

Berg, N. (2005) Decision-making environments in which unboundedly rational decision makers choose to ignore relevant information, Global Business and Economics Review 7(1): 59-73.

Berg, N. (2005) Non-response bias, In Kempf-Leonard, K. (ed.), Encyclopedia of Social Measurement vol. 2, pp. 865-873, London, Academic Press.

Berg, N. (2005) Finance, psychology, economics and the design of successful institutions. In W. Jingping (Ed.), Shanghai Forum 2005, Economic Globalization and the Choice of Asia: Finance (pp. 502-509). Shanghai: Fudan University Press.

Berg N. (2005) Psychological economics and the size of government: On anti-, anti-anti-, ... , (anti-)n, In Yasin, Y. (ed.), Economic Modernization and Cultivation of Institutions (Proceedings of the 6th Annual Conference of the State University - Higher School of Economics, Moscow), HSE Publishing House, pp. 367-375.

Berg, N. and Hoffrage, U. (2005) Environmental determinants of simple decision rules: No cognitive limitations needed, In Opwis, K. and Penner, I. (eds.) Proceedings of KogWis05: The German Cognitive Science Conference 2005, Schwabe, Basel, pp. 9-14.

Berg, N. (2005) Book Review: Conflict and Cooperation: Institutional and Behavioral Economics, by Schmid, A., Journal of Socio-Economic 34(6), 866-868.

Berg, N. (2004) No-decision classification: An alternative to testing for statistical significance, Journal of Socio-Economics 33(5), 631-650.

Berg, N. and Lien, D. (2003) Tracking-error decision rules and accumulated wealth, Applied Mathematical Finance 10(2), 91-119.

Berg, N. (2003) Normative behavioral economics, Journal of Socio-Economics 32, 411-427.

Berg, N. (2003) Hedging housing risk and the new economy: Is there a connection, and should firms care?, Global Business and Economics Review 5(1), 10-36.

Berg, N. (2003) Sometimes we have to choose between freedoms, Dallas Morning News, February 21, p. 23A.

Berg, N. (2003) We must discuss who gets what, Dallas Morning News, January 10, p.21A.

Berg, N. (2003) Review of Nigger: The Strange Career of a Troublesome Word, by Kennedy, R., in Magill's Literary Annual 2002: Essay-Reviews of 200 Outstanding Books Published in the United States During 2002, pp. 586-589, Pasadena, CA, Salem Press.

Berg, N. (2003) Review of Soros: The Life and Times of a Messianic Billionaire, by Kaufman, M.T., in Magill's Literary Annual 2002: Essay-Reviews of 200 Outstanding Books Published in the United States During 2002, pp. 794-798, Pasadena, CA, Salem Press.

Berg, N. and Lien, D. (2002) Measuring the effect of sexual orientation on income: Evidence of discrimination?, Contemporary Economic Policy 20, 394-414. [Cited in Business Week, April 21, p.30, Canada's National Post, April 28, 2003, and Atlantic Monthly, October 2003.]

Berg, N. (2002) Coping with journal-price inflation: Leading policy proposals and the quality-spectrum, Economics Bulletin 4(14), 1-8.

Berg, N. (2002) Behavioral cost-benefit economics: Toward a new normative approach to policy, In Kantarelis, D. (ed.), Global Business & Economics Review-Anthology, pp.132-141.

Berg, N. (1998), Review of Logical Dilemmas: The Life and Work of Kurt Gödel, by Dawson, J.W. Jr., in Magill's Literary Annual: Books of 1997, pp. 517-521, Pasadena, CA, Salem Press.

Working papers

Berg, N., Berg, Charles M., and Ungor, M. (2016), Hedonic Aspiration Control.

Berg, N. and Buckles, B. (2013), Do residential real estate values over-react to the announcement of court-ordered scattered-site public housing?: Dallas case study.

Berg, N., and Buckles, B. (2012), Utility-controlled power grids Versus Independent System Operator (ISO)s: Measuring the effect of ISOs on electric transmission line capacity.

Berg, N., Eckel, C. and Johnson, C. (2014), Inconsistency Pays?: Time-inconsistent subjects and EU violators earn more.

Berg, N. (2014), Imitation in location choice.

Gigerenzer, G. and Berg, N. (2007) [German language] Kommentar zum Vortrag von Klaus M. Schmidt.