Hannes Rusch awarded ERC Starting Grant
Hannes Rusch, assistant professor at the School of Business and Economics, is one of the 397 early-career researchers who received European Research Council starting grants! These grants are awarded to researchers with great potential and excellent research proposals.
Hannes' research will focus on 'Determinants and Dynamics of Collaborative Exploitation'. In this context, 'collaborative exploitation' means groups of humans working together to exploit others, thus stressing the between-group dimension of these relations.
"Research on exploitation is not short on data, historical or otherwise," Hannes explains. "However, an astonishing gap exists in the research literature with respect to modelling the incentive structures of collaborative exploitation and understanding the psychological aspects involved in the process."
Because of this discrepancy, it is hard to understand how the macro-level patterns and dynamics observable in the existing data emerge from micro-level traits, decisions, and behaviour.
"What I want to do in this project is to develop and test a versatile game-theoretic framework and corresponding new paradigms for behavioural experiments that provide novel insights into the strategic logic and the psychology of this pervasive malpractice."
In the longer run, its results will help inform policy-making which aims to end modern-day slavery and other forms of exploitation, bringing it in line with the UN’s Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 8.
"I am very excited to be given this unique opportunity to focus on pursuing a line of research for five years and with the help of a dedicated research team. In preparing the proposal and the interview, I received feedback and tips from many wonderful colleagues. I'd like to explicitly thank them all again!"
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