Dear reader,

"It is not important whether a theory is elegant, or whether it is beautiful, the only thing that matters is – is it true?" This profound conviction by Ernst Fehr defines the very essence of scientific discovery: the relentless pursuit of empirical truth. It is this dedication to real-world evidence that reshaped our understanding of human behavior in economics. As Ernst Fehr celebrates his 70th birthday, we are delighted to congratulate him and to share a few insights into his research.

We wish you a pleasant and relaxing summer break,

Matthias Ammann, Chief Operating Officer
Hans-Joachim Voth, Scientific Director

Shaping economics and economists

Former Swiss Federal Councillor Kaspar Villiger paid tribute to Ernst Fehr on the occasion of his 70th birthday at the UZH Department of Economics' Annual Research Night, a flagship event jointly hosted with the Excellence Foundation Zurich. Reflecting on his own career in business, government, and finance, Villiger described how Fehr’s research transformed not only economics, but also our understanding of human behavior, institutions, and society. His tribute was a reminder that Fehr’s influence extends far beyond academia.

The role of social preferences and social norms in economic life

Leading economists from around the world gathered this June at the University of Zurich, to celebrate Ernst Fehr’s profound impact on economics. The conference featured Nobel laureates and internationally renowned scholars, among them several members of the UBS Center Advisory Board and UBS Foundation Professors. Together, they explored how social preferences and norms continue to reshape research on markets, institutions, inequality, climate policy, and economic development.

Stay tuned for selected talks and conference highlights.

Thought Supply

How does society shape the preferences of individuals?

Ernst Fehr has spent decades studying what really motivates human behavior – fairness, reciprocity, and the social preferences that standard economics long ignored. He asked questions that the discipline was not yet ready to embrace – and when his ideas met resistance, he looked for new ways to test them. In the latest episode of Thought Supply, he sits down with colleague Roberto Weber to reflect on his research, his intellectual journey, and the questions that still keep him up at night.

Giving shareholders a voice

In his UBS Center Opinions lecture, Nobel laureate Oliver Hart argues that today’s shareholders are not merely investors, they are citizens with social and moral preferences. Yet most never exercise the voting rights attached to their shares. Instead, those votes are cast by a handful of large asset managers on behalf of millions of investors, often without asking what those investors actually want.

Morality in markets and policy

We like to think of ourselves as moral people – but how does that actually influence how we behave as consumers, workers, and citizens? In a new project, UBS Foundation Professor Roberto Weber will explore how people’s moral values shape their decisions in markets and their support for policies. He will identify how such concerns can be employed to produce desirable societal outcomes. For this project, Prof. Weber has been awarded a SNSF grant of CHF 970’000.

Social preferences over ordinal outcomes

There are many ways to make decisions for groups of people, but every system has its drawbacks. The question is: which systems produce outcomes that people perceive as fair? Most methods, including Swiss political elections, capture only positive preferences: you can vote for candidates you like, but not meaningfully against those you dislike. A new study by UBS Foundation Professor Sandro Ambuehl and B. Douglas Bernheim, published in the American Economic Review, finds that people care far more about avoiding outcomes that many strongly dislike than about maximizing the number who get their first choice – a preference for compromise that most voting systems fail to reflect.