John List

Kenneth G. Griffin Distinguished Service Professor
Department of Economics

 

Bio

John List is the Kenneth C. Griffin Distinguished Service Professor in the Department of Economics, and serves as Co-Director of the TMW Center for Early Learning and Public Health. Professor List’s research applies field experiments to gain insights into behavioral principles that are shared across different a wide variety of domains, including education, youth violence, philanthropy, and environmental economics. Professor List’s recent educational research has tested the impact of financial incentives on student achievement, and the effects of these incentives when they are combined with exposure of students to alternative curricula and pedagogical methods. Professor List has also examined the impact of financial incentives for parental participation in their children’s education. Professor List traces the long-term consequences of the interventions employed by these programs by continuing to track students’ outcomes as they disperse into the labor market. In 2010, Professor List received a $10 million grant from Chicago philanthropist Kenneth Griffin to study preschool education, leading to the founding of the Griffin Early Childhood Center in Chicago Heights, IL. Professor List is the recipient of numerous awards and honorary degrees, including the 2010 Kenneth Galbraith Award and the 2008 Arrow Prize for Senior Economists for his research in behavioral economics.

 

Selected Publications

List, John A., Anya Samek, and Dana Suskind. “Combining Behavioral Economics and
Field Experiments to Reimagine Early Childhood Education,” Behavioral Public Policy,
forthcoming.

Levitt, Steven, John A. List, Susanne Neckermann, and Sally Sadoff, “The Behavioralist
Goes to School: Leveraging Behavioral Economics to Improve Educational Performance”,
American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, (2016), 8(4), 183-219.

List, John A.; and Samak, Anya C, “The behavioralist as nutritionist: Leveraging
behavioral economics to improve child food choice and consumption,” Journal of Health
Economics, (2015), Volume: 39, pp. 135-146.

Cowell, Jason, Anya Samek, John A. List and Jean Decety. “The Curious Relation Between Theory of Mind and Sharing in Preschool Age Children,” PLoS ONE (2015), 10(2), e.

List, John A. “Using Field Experiments to Change the Template of How We Teach
Economics ,” Journal of Economic Education, (2014) Volume: 45 Issue: 2, pp. 81-89.

Hoffman Moshe; Gneezy Uri; List John A, “Nurture affects gender differences in spatial abilities,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Science, (2011), 108(36), pp. 14786-14788

List, John A. and Imran Rasul, “Field Experiments in Labor Economics,” in Handbook of
Labour Economics, eds. Orley Ashenfelter and David Card, (2010), 4A, pp. 103-228.

 

CV

Click here to download a copy of John List’s CV.