Associate Professor
 Economics
Yale School of Management


Contact Information:
Yale School of Management
135 Prospect St., Box 208200
New Haven, CT 06520-8200
(203) 432-6049 (office)
(203) 432-6974 (fax)

keith.chen@yale.edu
Office hours:
Thursdays, 9:30 to 11:00

Assistant:
Mary Ellen Nichols
(203) 432-3955 (office)
maryellen.nichols@yale.edu

 

Professor Chen's research blurs traditional boundaries in both subject and methodology, bringing unorthodox tools to bear on problems at the intersection of Economics, Psychology, and Biology. In a recent project he measured what ex-prisoners lives would have looked like had prison conditions been more or less harsh. In another project he demonstrates the ability of Tamarin Monkeys to master complex repeated food-exchange games, displaying a game-theoretic acumen previously thought unique to humans. Most recently Professor Chen has shown that when allowed to make purchasing decisions, Capuchin Monkeys display many of the hallmark biases of human behavior, suggesting that some of our most fundamental biases are evolutionarily ancient. This year Professor Chen teaches Negotiating Strategy, and Behavioral Economics.

Research Interests:

Primary Fields: Game Theory, Behavioral Economics, and Applied Microeconomics.
Secondary Fields: The Microfoundations of Preferences and Biases, Bargaining.
Teaching: Bargaining & Negotiations, Behavioral Economics, and Microeconomic Theory.

Most Recent Working Paper:

Rationalization and Cognitive Dissonance: Do Choices Affect or Reflect Preferences?
This draft: January, 2008

Most Recent Published Papers:

Modeling a Presidential Prediction Market
Joint with Jonathan E. Ingersoll and Edward H. Kaplan
Forthcoming, Management Science, 2008

The Taste for Leisure, Career Choice, and the Returns to Education
Joint with Judith Chevalier
Forthcoming, Economic Letters, 2008

Do Harsher Prison Conditions Reduce Recidivism? A Discontinuity-Based Approach
Joint with Jesse Shapiro
American Law and Economic Review, 2007