A new research institute set up by academic staff from the Department of Economics aims to further our understanding of the behaviour and decision-making of individuals and households.

InstEAD – the Institute for Economic Analysis of Decision-Making – is to launch in mid-2013. The institute will bring together international researchers in areas such as behavioural economics, economic psychology, health economics and labour economics. Their work will aim to enhance our understanding of how individuals and households respond to their changing economic, financial and personal circumstances.

Co-directed by Professor Sarah Brown and Professor Jennifer Roberts, InstEAD will focus on economic decisions relating to:

• household finances, social mobility and poverty
• health and lifestyle
• the labour market, including retirement and pension choices.

In particular, InstEAD will examine the links between microeconomic decision-making and macroeconomic outcomes – in other words, how the choices made by individuals and households feed in to the bigger picture of national and international economic well-being.

The institute is shortly to begin recruiting staff and hopes to launch a website by the end of 2012. To stay up to date with developments at InstEAD, keep following the department's news blog and look out for updates on our Twitter or Facebook.