Experiments on families
Teaching materials
Bounded Rationality Book
CV and Research Publications
Economics of the Public Sector
Recent and Current Research Students 
Economics Dept.
Sign-up for Latest Couples Experiment
HOME
CV and Selected Research Publications

Welcome to my homepage at Royal Holloway, where I'm a professor of Economics.

My BA is in Mathematics and Economics from the University of Warwick. Both of my postgraduate degrees (MPhil and DPhil) are from the University of Oxford. I was at UEA from 1991-2005. Before that I was a lecturer at the University of Stirling. My major research interests centre on:
Household decisions Environmental Economics Bounded Rationality & Public Policy Public Economics Regulating the Information economy

What not to wear for Economics experiments

Bounded Rationality and Public Policy.
What are the implications of current research in experimental and behavioural economics for public economics? The normative issues seem to me most intractable, but there's work with Bob Sugden below that considers some of the issues. Positive issues are equally important: governments don't just tax and spend - they frame.

Decision-making within the household and its implication for measures of consumer surplus.
I'm currently working on a research project with Ian Bateman (left) as part of CSERGE. We have some theoretical results on the non-cooperative household and we've been conducting experiments, testing between competing theories of household decision-making - the first results of which appear below.

(with I. Bateman, B. Rhodes, C. Starmer and R. Sugden) Anchoring and yea-saying with private goods: an experiment.

Bounded Rationality and Public Policy: The Economics of Merit Wants, forthcoming from Kluwer Academic Publishers, some draft chapters will be available from the link to your left,

Cycling with rules of thumb: testing theories of co-ordination using real-world data.(yes, it really is about bikes)

2005 (with Ian Bateman, Daniel Kahneman, Alistair Munro, Chris Starmer, Robert Sugden) Is there loss aversion in buying? An adversarial collaboration Journal of Public Economics

2005 (with I. J. Bateman) Household versus individual valuation: what's the difference?

2005 (with I. Bateman) An experiment on risky choice amongst households. Economic Journal, March

2005 Household willingness to pay equals individual willingness to pay if and only if the household income pools. Economics Letters

2004 (with Robin Cubitt and Chris Starmer) Preference reversal: an experimental investigation of economic and psychological hypotheses, Economic Journal, 114, (497), 709-726

2003 On the theory of reference-dependent preferences", (with Bob Sugden), Journal of Economic Behaviour and Organisation

2003 (with I. Bateman) Testing Economic Models of the Household: An Experiment.

2002 (with I. Bateman) Non-cooperative decision-making and measures of household surplus. Paper given at 2nd World Congress of Environmental and Resource Economics, Monterey, 2002.

2005 (with I. J. Bateman and G. L. Poe) Asymmetric Dominance Effects in Choice Experiments and Contingent Valuation.

2003 The Spatial Impact of Genetically Modified Crops.

2003 Monopolisation and The Regulation of Genetically Modified Crops. Environment and Development Economics

2002 The Regulation of Genetically Modified Crops: An Economic Model, in Environmental Policy, Agriculture and Biotechnology Tim Swanson (ed.), Kluwer Academic Press.

2001 (with I. Bateman, I. Langford, C.Starmer and R.Sugden), "Estimating Four Hicksian Welfare Measures for a Public Good: A Contingent Valuation Investigation", Land Economics

1999 (with Jim Shortle, Nick Hanley and Robin Faichney) Least Cost allocations for probablisitic water quality targets. In Steve Sorrell and Jim Skea (eds.) Pollution for Sale: emissions trading and joint implementation, Cheltenham, Edward Elgar

1999 (with Nick Hanley) Information, Uncertainty and Contingent Valuation, Ch. 8 in Bateman, I. and Willis, K. (eds.) Valuing Environmental Preferences: Theory and Practice of the Contingent Valuation Method in the US, EC and Developing Countries, OUP.

1999 (with Sara Connolly (right)) Economics of the Public Sector, Prentice Hall. London.

1998 (with R. Faichney, N. Hanley, J. Shortle) Market Mechanisms for Pollution Control In the Forth Estuary, Journal of Environmental Management. 52, 211-225.

1997 Economics and Biological Evolution, Environmental and Resource Economics Volume 9, no.4, 429-449.

1997 (with I. Bateman, B. Rhodes, C. Starmer, and R. Sugden) Does Part-Whole Bias Exist? An Experimental Investigation. Economic Journal , March, 322-332.

1997 (with I. Bateman, B. Rhodes, C. Starmer, and R. Sugden) A Test of the Theory of Reference-Dependent Preferences, Quarterly Journal of Economics, Vol.112, 2, 479-505.

reprinted as Chapter Ten, pp 180-201 in D. Kahneman and A. Tversky (eds) Choices, Values, and Frames. Cambridge UP.

1994 (with Nick Hanley) Valuing Habitat Protection: Two Case Studies in Contingent Valuation, Ch. 12 in Hanley, N. and Spash, C.(eds.) Cost Benefit Analysis and the Environment, Edward Elgar.

1992 In-Kind Distribution, Uncertainty and Merit Wants: A Simple Model, Public Finance Quarterly, vol 20(2) April 175-194.

1992 Self-selection and Optimal In-kind Transfers, Economic Journal, vol 102 no. 414 September 1184-1196.

1991 The Optimal Public Provision of Private Goods, Journal of Public Economics 44(2) 239-261.

1991 Welfare Effects of Multiple Rationing, Bulletin of Economic Research, 43(4) 355-60.

1989 In-Kind Transfers, Cash Grants and Labour Supply, European Economic Review, 33, 1597-1604.

1988 The Measurement of Racial and Other Forms of Discrimination ,University of Stirling, Discussion Papers in Economics, Finance and Investment, No. 148, September (Scanned copy)..


Sara and Miyuki (my wife) catch sight of me in a kilt.
Regulation of the information economy.
Working with the people of PIRA, I've done work for DG Information and the UK's Department of Trade on Industry on the issue. Reports can be found here:

2002 DTI Competitive Analysis of the UK Publishing Media Sector

2001 Commercial exploitation of Europe's public sector information

Email:alistair.munro at rhul.ac.uk