Nora Szech engages in market and institution design, theoretically and empirically, in order to render institutions sustainable. She combines traditional and behavioral insights in order to understand how agents behave. In many markets, e.g. in health markets, patients do not necessarily understand quality, they may follow heuristics instead. In other markets, participants may prefer to ignore consequences of their activities in order to keep a positive self-image. 

When designing competition, specific contexts may require specific designs. For example, if a competition is very asymmetric (think about college admissions, promotions, but also lobbying), how could we design such contests in order to fight potential discouragement of contestants from weaker groups -- and keeping everybody still motivated? And how can we design markets such that our moral values remain respected?

Nora holds the Chair of Political Economy at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) since 2013. In 2010, she obtained her Ph.D. at the Bonn Graduate School of Economics under the supervision of Benny Moldovanu. Her thesis was awarded the best of 2010 at the University of Bonn. From 2010 to 2012, she was a postdoc (Akademische Rätin auf Zeit) at the chair of Benny Moldovanu in Bonn. In 2011, she was awarded the Reinhard Selten prize. From 2012 to 2013, she was tenured Professor for Industrial Economics at the University of Bamberg. In addition to the KIT, Nora is affiliated with the Berlin Social Science Center and with CESifo.