Inaugural lecture – How do I know how much you are willing to pay for an office parking space?

Economics is a broad discipline that applies an economic approach to study almost every aspect of society. Many economists work in topical areas – such as international trade or housing markets – but just as many specialise in studying the economic approach itself.

Professor Yoo falls into the latter category. His expertise is in the statistical tools that measure individual preferences by combining economic theory with data from behavioural experiments. The findings provide insights into how we price non-market goods (for example, additional taxes we are willing to pay to support endangered national parks) and how we trade off different attributes of available choices (for example, fuel costs and driving range of diesel versus electric cars).

His lecture will provide an overview of his economic approach, its wide-ranging applications, and how it has led to recent research collaborations with knee surgeons in Denmark and scientific researchers based in a US healthcare company.