Stefania Bortolotti

Stefania Bortolotti is an Associate Professor in the Department of Economics at the University of Bologna. Her research focuses on experimental and behavioral economics, emphasizing cross-cultural cooperation, trust, fairness views, incentives, and the gender gap in science. She has held research fellowships at institutions including the Max Planck Institute for Research on Collective Goods and the University of Cologne, and was a visiting scholar at Carnegie Mellon University. She is affiliated with IZA (Institute of Labor Economics).

Education & Positions:

• Associate Professor, Department of Economics, University of Bologna
• Research Fellow, Max Planck Institute for Research on Collective Goods (Bonn)
• Research Fellow, University of Cologne
• Visiting Scholar, Carnegie Mellon University

Research Interests:

Bortolotti investigates how cultural contexts influence cooperative behavior, moral decision-making, and economic outcomes. Her work explores regional disparities in Italy through lenses like amoral familism and social capital, and examines structural incentives in group dynamics. She also evaluates payment systems' behavioral impacts and studies fairness perceptions in punitive norms. Recent work addresses cognitive biases in scientific gender disparities.

Publications:

Her articles analyze North-South cooperation gaps in Italy, efficient breach contract theories, and payment system behaviors. Themes consistently emphasize experimental validation of behavioral hypotheses in economic contexts.

Affiliations:

In addition to her university role, Bortolotti contributes to IZA's research initiatives and maintains the Experimental Economics Group at Bologna. Her work bridges theoretical models with real-world experiments to understand human decision-making patterns.