Peter Andre has received the 2024 “Sturm & Drang Award” for his research in behavioral economics. The award, recognizing the best publication by a young researcher, was presented during the Dies Academicus at Goethe University on November 8. Peter Andre is an Assistant Professor of Behavioral Finance at the Leibniz Institute for Financial Research SAFE and Goethe University.
His paper, “Shallow Meritocracy”, published in the Review of Economic Studies, explores how fairness judgments in meritocracies often disregard the role of unequal circumstances in shaping individual choices. Using experiments and real-world data, Andre demonstrates that while people reward effort, they frequently fail to adjust for external disadvantages, exposing flaws in meritocratic ideals. His findings reveal that participants judged workers’ rewards based solely on effort, even when disadvantaged individuals faced significant obstacles. This reflects either a fundamental belief in effort-based rewards or difficulty in accounting for hypothetical equal circumstances.
The research underscores the limitations of current meritocratic systems and highlights the importance of addressing fairness in policy and organizational contexts. Further details about the study can be found here. here.