Dr Cecilia Chen

About me:

Dr. Jingnan (Cecilia) Chen joined the Business School in September 2014 as Lecturer in Economics from the Interdisciplinary Center for Economic Science (ICES) at George Mason University, where she earned her doctoral degree.

• Game Theory
• Experimental Economics
• Behavioural Economics

Deception is part of many important economic interactions, for example, insurance claims, job interviews, labor negotiations, regulatory hearing, and tax compliance. In those settings, people may increase their expected material gain by providing information that they believe to be false, a behavior predicted by standard economic theory. Yet, life experience as well as recent academic literatures shows that sometimes people do tell the truth at a cost to self. This stands in contrast to standard economic theory predictions. To better understand these behaviors, my current research focuses on deception and commitment within the context of free-style communication, and contribute to our understanding of deception and promises (e.g.Gneezy (2005), Charness and Dufwenberg (2006), Gibson et al.(2013)).

My research combines experimental methodology, game theory and insights from psychology and sociology. With those tools, I am able to further my understanding of pro-social behaviors (particularly deception and promises). My research involves testing implications of relevant behavioral theories, devising mechanism to foster pro-social behaviors, and identifying the limits of such mechanism.

• BS in Finance (Shanghai Jiao Tong University)
• MA & Ph.D in Economics (George Mason University)