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IAREP International Association for Research in Economic Psychology

Organisation

Founded in 1982, the International Association for Research in Economic Psychology (IAREP) is the largest association for all those interested in the areas where psychology and economics intersect.

Economic psychology, an interdisciplinary field of study, is described as the science of mental life and behaviour and the study of how individuals affect the economy – and vice-versa, in the latest textbook on the discipline, Economic Psychology, edited by Ranyard (2017). A branch of applied psychology, it is considered to provide economics with a realistic and insightful understanding of human rationality in the economic domain, which includes the impact of emotions and powerful psychological limitations often found in economic behaviour and decision-making.

IAREP has a wide international membership, drawn from psychologists and economists, but also from specialists in business administration, marketing, and consumer behaviour.

The interests of IAREP are broad. A few members would describe themselves as "economic psychologists," and work in departments or institutes of economic psychology. The majority, however, are experts in one discipline who recognise that neighbouring disciplines have something important to contribute to the areas they are interested in. IAREP serves as a platform for researchers taking this kind of open-minded approach. Economic psychology is concerned both with the psychological mechanisms through which economic behaviour comes about, and with the psychological effects of economic events, in addition to economic mechanisms and effects.

Aims

In 2007 IAREP adopted the status of a UK “company limited by guarantee and not having share capital.” The members of IAREP are its guarantors. The articles of association, filed with Companies House in London, affirm the following aims of IAREP:

• To further research, teaching and the study of economic psychology,
• To provide a meeting place at the annual conference for those interested in the area where psychology and economics intersect,
• To support graduate summer schools in psychology,
• To support workshops on special topics in psychology, and
• To provide an informal network of friends and colleagues that crosses national and disciplinary boundaries.

In pursuing these aims, the activities of IAREP include:

• Organising an Annual Conference, usually held at a university in Europe. It is an important meeting for researchers and policy makers interested in cross-disciplinary work in psychology and economics.
• Managing the Journal of Economic Psychology (JoEP) since 1981 (published by Elsevier). IAREP founded the journal, elects the editors-in-chief, and supports the activity of the editors and publisher in many ways.
• Publishing a bi-annual newsletter giving news about activities in economic psychology and related fields and keeping a website.
• Supporting graduate Summer Schools in economic psychology.
• Supporting Workshops on special topics in economic psychology.

Perhaps the most important way in which IAREP works, however, is as an informal network of friends and colleagues, which successfully crosses national and disciplinary borders. Many joint research projects have been launched through discussions held at IAREP conferences and workshops, and many research publications have originated in the cross-fertilisation of ideas that occurs when people of different backgrounds meet and discuss common problems with an open mind.

History

IAREP was formally created in 1982, after a group of European researchers, who had been holding annual colloquia to discuss their findings since 1976, decided to create the Standing Committee of the European Group of Researchers, in 1978, while keeping their regular meetings and exchanging ideas about their studies. Their purpose was to investigate economic behaviour and the psychological effects of economic phenomena on individuals, groups and populations. It has since been the leading organisation to disseminate economic psychology throughout the world over the past decades, with members that can be economic or social psychologists, experimental economists, and other experts in fields related to the discipline, such as consumer behaviour, finance, environment, policy makers, information and communication specialists, to name a few.

Conferences

Since 1976, when the first colloquium was held in Tilburg, the Netherlands, annual conferences have been organised by IAREP, sometimes along with the Society for the Advancement of Behavioral Economics (SABE), or under the umbrella of the International Confederation for the Advancement of Behavioral Economics and Economic Psychology (ICABEEP), established by IAREP and SABE in 2009 in order to increase cooperation between the two organisations.They take place in different countries, mostly in Europe, with few notable exceptions, like the 2003 edition in New Zealand, 1998, 2004, 2009, and 2013 in North America, and 1986 and 2017 in Israel, and cover different issues within the psychology–economics intersect. Popular topics of the conferences are saving behaviour; household decision making; economic socialisation; behavioural economics; behavioural finance; heuristics and biases; choice architecture; consumer behaviour; intertemporal choice; the psychology of money; the psychology of debt; taxation; experimental economics; environment, sustainability and consumption; financial capability; economic and financial crises and their psychological underpinnings, and work.

At these conferences, IAREP and Elsevier also sponsor the Kahneman lectures, with a notably relevant expert invited to be the keynote speaker (Daniel Kahneman himself inaugurated the series at the Paris Conference, in 2006), and since 1984, the best student papers presented at the conference. IAREP is not the only association to congregate economic psychology researchers, since the 9^th Division at the International Association of Applied Psychology (IAAP) is also dedicated to the same field.