Dr Ganna Pogrebna

ganna Room 409
Tel +44 (0)114 222 3316
Fax +44 (0)114 222 3458

Brief Biography

Dr. Ganna Pogrebna has joined the Department of Economics in January 2012 as a Leverhulme Research Fellow. Ganna studied Economics in the University of Missouri Kansas City (US) and the University of Innsbruck (Austria). She holds a Ph.D. in Economics and Social Sciences from the University of Innsbruck. Before coming to Sheffield, Ganna worked as a postdoctoral research fellow in the University of Innsbruck (Austria), the University of Bonn (Germany), Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin (Germany), Columbia University in New York (USA) and the University of Warwick (UK).

Current research

Ganna is interested in analysing individual and group decision making under risk and uncertainty (ambiguity) using laboratory experiments, field experiments as well as non-experimental data. She studies how decision makers reveal their preferences, learn, coordinate and make trade-offs in static and dynamic risk and uncertain (ambiguous) environments with policy applications to leadership, innovation, finance and healthcare. Ganna’s work aims to develop quantitative models capable of describing and predicting individual and group behaviour in static and dynamic situations in the face of risk and uncertainty (ambiguity). She is particularly interested in investigating the impact of imprecision and noise on decision making.

Brief description of project

In 2011 Ganna has received an Early Career Leverhulme Fellowship to work on a project “Pregnancy, Parenting and Risk Attitudes”. Many decision making situations involve a degree of risk and uncertainty. The way people make choices in these situations relates to their risk attitudes. An important group that has received little attention in the economic literature are parents. Yet, parents constitute a significant fraction of population and make important decisions with regard to health, education, investment, insurance, finance and other domains. This project applies an innovative interdisciplinary approach to study whether the event of becoming a parent changes behavior under risk and uncertainty. Decisions of future and current parents are studied under financial, social, health, safety, and other risks. All recent news about Ganna’s Leverhumle project can be found on her personal website.

Together with her collaborator Hela Maafi (GREG-HEC Paris), Ganna also holds a Small Research Grant from the British Academy to conduct research on the topic “Preference Reversals and Range Effects”. In many areas of public life (health, education, environment) policy makers take into account polls where members of the general public state their preferences over uncertain events. While in some cases the chances of an event can be easily assessed (choice under risk), in others the chances are not objectively known (choice under ambiguity).

Experimental evidence reports a robust preference reversal phenomenon: individuals reveal different preferences under risk and ambiguity dependent on the way in which these preferences are elicited. If stated preferences depend on elicitation procedure, it is of significant theoretical and practical importance to understand the reasons why different procedures produce different responses. The proposed research project uses an incentivized laboratory experiment to study whether and to what extent preference reversals between different pairs of lotteries are affected by the interval on which the minimum selling price for each lottery is determined (range effects). The implications of range effects are studied under risk and under ambiguity. All updates about this project can be found on Ganna’s personal website.

Publications

(please, see Ganna’s personal website for details):

Pogrebna, G., Krantz, D., Schade, Ch. and C. Keser (2011) “Words versus Actions as a Means to Influence Cooperation in Social Dilemma Situations,” Theory and Decision, 71(4), pp. 473-502.

Blavatskyy, P. and G. Pogrebna (2010) “Models of Stochastic Choice and Decision Theories: Why Both AreImportant for Analyzing Decisions,” Journal of Applied Econometrics, 25(6), pp. 963-986.

Pogrebna, G. and P. Blavatskyy (2009) “Coordination, Focal Points and Voting in Strategic Situations: A Natural Experiment,” Public Choice, 140(1-2), pp. 125-143.

Blavatskyy, P. and G. Pogrebna (2009) “Myopic Loss Aversion Revisited,” Economics Letters, 104(1), pp.43-45.

Blavatskyy, P. and G. Pogrebna (2009) “Endowment Effects? “Even” with Half-a-Million on the Table!,” Theory and Decision, 68(1-2), pp. 173-192.

Blavatskyy, P. and G. Pogrebna (2009) “Reevaluating Evidence on Myopic Loss Aversion: Aggregate Patterns versus Individual Choices,” Theory and Decision, 68(1-2), pp. 159-171.

Pogrebna, G. (2008) “Naive Advice When Half a Million is at Stake,” Economics Letters, 98(2), pp. 148-154.

Blavatskyy, P. and G. Pogrebna (2008) “Risk Aversion When Gains Are Likely and Unlikely: Evidence from a Natural Experiment with Large Stakes,” Theory and Decision, 64(2), pp. 395-420.