16th Annual Behavioral Conference Goes Virtual

Each spring, the Yale ICF hosts the Lynne & Andrew Redleaf Foundation Graduate Student Conference (formerly the Whitebox Advisors Graduate Student Conference). The conference is organized and run by Yale PhD students selected by a committee of Yale faculty members, including Professor Nicholas Barberis. The student fellows also receive funding to help with their research in the areas of behavioral economics, behavioral finance, and behavioral marketing.

In its 16th year, the Lynne & Andrew Redleaf Foundation Graduate Student Conference draws top doctoral students from around the world to present their research in the fields of behavioral economics, behavioral finance and behavioral marketing. The goal of the conference is to foster an environment to promote interaction amongst doctoral student researchers and to provide feedback for students presenting their work in these fields. 

An Unexpected Event Changed This Year’s Conference…

In mid-March, the student conference organizers had just completed their review of paper submissions and were ready to send out acceptance emails. They were about to invite eight presenters to visit New Haven, CT for this one-day conference in May when the Covid-19 pandemic suddenly forced everything to change. As Yale University quickly moved to online learning for the remainder of the semester, the Yale ICF also looked for ways to adapt and continue our initiatives online. The student conference organizers and the ICF worked to convert the Lynne & Andrew Redleaf Foundation Graduate Student Conference into an online event for the first time.

In preparation for this conference, the student organizers were relieved to find out that all potential presenters were more than willing to present virtually. They also found out that the eight presenters were scattered across the globe! Therefore, student organizers had to construct a conference agenda taking several diffrent time zones into account. Normally, papers are grouped into specific categories, but this year papers were split up a bit to accommodate students presenting in Asia, Europe and both coasts of the United States!

Another item that makes this conference unique is the in-person networking because the behavioral sciences scholarly group is a relatively small group. However, everyone was pleasently surprised by the intimacy that this virtual conference provided. Using the Zoom meeting feature, the student organizers were able to host a controlled group of participants who actively watched the presentations and participated in engaging question and answer sessions. It was also a great way to broaden the audience and allow more international participants which included many former Yale Summer School in Behavioral Finance students!

Thank You

The ICF would like to thank the student organizers for all of their work selecting intriguing papers and organizing a fantastic conference! Thank you to the PhD student presenters who participated virtually from around the world and gave great talks on interesting topics in the behavioral economics and behavioral finance fields!

And lastly, the ICF would like to give a big thank you to Lynne & Andrew Redleaf for their continued support and sponsoring this annual graduate student conference! The research efforts in the fields of behavioral economics, behavioral finance, and behavioral marketing have been helped immeasurably by their generous support.

Visit the conference website for presentation details and agenda.