Ernst Fehr (born 21 June 1956 in Hard, Vorarlberg, Austria) is an Austrian-Swiss behavioral economist and neuroeconomist. He is a Professor of Microeconomics and Experimental Economic Research at the University of Zurich (UZH), teaching there since 1994, and Director of the UBS Center for Economics in Society since 2012. He previously served as Chairman of the Department of Economics at the University of Zurich from 2010 to 2015, was an Affiliated Faculty Member of the Department of Economics at MIT from 2003 to 2011, and a Global Distinguished Professor in Economics at New York University from 2011 to 2020. His research covers the areas of the evolution of human cooperation and sociality, in particular fairness, reciprocity and bounded rationality.
He is also well known for his important contributions to the new field of neuroeconomics[citation needed], as well as to behavioral economics, behavioral finance and experimental economics. According to IDEAS/REPEC, he is the second-most influential German-speaking economist[citation needed], and is ranked at 75th globally.
In 2010, he co-founded FehrAdvice & Partners with his brother Gerhard Fehr, creating the first globally operating consultancy firm completely dedicated to behavioral economics.[citation needed]
In 2016, Fehr was ranked as the most influential economist in Germany, Austria, and Switzerland.
In 2017, Fehr was appointed as lifelong foreign honorary member of the American Economic Association, AEA, together with Philippe Aghion, an economics professor at Harvard University. The number of honorary members is limited. The election is made by the Executive Committee of the American Economic Association and will only take place if a former honorary member dies.
In 2026, he was elected as an international member of the United States National Academy of Sciences. The same year, he was also elected to the Order Pour le Mérite for Sciences and Arts in Germany.
Why Social Preferences Matter
In his 2002 collaboration with Urs Fischbacher, Why Social Preferences Matter – The Impact of Non-Selfish Motives on Competition, Cooperation and Incentives, he begins with the abstract:
A substantial number of people exhibit social preferences, which means they are not solely motivated by material self-interest but also care positively or negatively for the material payoffs of relevant reference agents. We show empirically that economists can fail to understand fundamental economic questions when they disregard social preferences, in particular, that without taking social preferences into account, it is not possible to understand adequately (i) effects of competition on market outcomes, (ii) laws governing cooperation and collective action, (iii) effects and the determinants of material incentives, (iv) which contracts and property rights arrangements are optimal, and (v) important forces shaping social norms and market failures.
He conjectures that we could call economics "the dismal science" because it consistently assumes the worst in human motives, which contrasts sharply with the pervasive idea that consumer tastes are heterogeneous. He attacks the idea on two fronts. First, because a great amount of evidence has contradicted the selfishness hypothesis; second, because failure to regard other-concerning behavior ignores central market activities.
↑The Economic Journal, "Why Social Preferences Matter – The Impact of Non-Selfish Motives on Competition, Cooperation and Incentives" (Blackwell Publishers, Oxford and Malden, 2002) Vol. 112, No. 489 C1–C33
