Media Releases

University of Toronto Professor Awarded Grant from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation

August 14, 2017

Toron­to, ON – An eco­nom­ics pro­fes­sor at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Toron­to is the recip­i­ent of a pres­ti­gious grant from the Alfred P. Sloan Foun­da­tion to study the behav­iour­al wel­fare eco­nom­ics of how nudges affect finan­cial deci­sion mak­ing.

San­dro Ambuehl is an assis­tant pro­fes­sor in the Depart­ment of Man­age­ment at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Toron­to Scar­bor­ough, with a cross-appoint­ment to the Busi­ness Eco­nom­ics area at the University’s Rot­man School of Man­age­ment. He joined the Uni­ver­si­ty in 2016 after com­plet­ing a PhD at Stan­ford Uni­ver­si­ty. He also holds a B.S. in Math­e­mat­ics and a Licen­ti­ate in Eco­nom­ics, both from the Uni­ver­si­ty of Zurich.

Prof. Ambuehl will receive $474,606 (US) over the three year project and will work joint­ly with B. Dou­glas Bern­heim, who is the Edward Ames Edmonds Pro­fes­sor of Eco­nom­ics and Chair of the Depart­ment of Eco­nom­ics at Stan­ford Uni­ver­si­ty.

Prof. Ambuehl’s research and teach­ing inter­ests include behav­iour­al and exper­i­men­tal eco­nom­ics. One of his areas of research include con­cerns design­ing poli­cies for the exchange of goods about which peo­ple have strong eth­i­cal intu­itions, as is the case, for exam­ple, with liv­ing organ dona­tion, or when incen­tive sys­tems place a price on the nat­ur­al envi­ron­ment. In anoth­er line of research, he stud­ies what poli­cies help peo­ple make good finan­cial deci­sions. He address­es these ques­tions using a com­bi­na­tion of con­trolled exper­i­ments and eco­nom­ic the­o­ry. His research has been fea­tured in the pop­u­lar press, includ­ing the Wash­ing­ton Post, the Finan­cial Times, and the Frank­furter All­ge­meine Zeitung.

The Rot­man School of Man­age­ment is locat­ed in the heart of Canada’s com­mer­cial and cul­tur­al cap­i­tal and is part of the Uni­ver­si­ty of Toron­to, one of the world’s top 20 research uni­ver­si­ties. The Rot­man School fos­ters a new way to think that enables our grad­u­ates to tack­le today’s glob­al busi­ness and soci­etal chal­lenges.  For more infor­ma­tion, vis­it www.rotman.utoronto.ca.

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For more infor­ma­tion:

Ken McGuf­fin
Man­ag­er, Media Rela­tions
Rot­man School of Man­age­ment
Uni­ver­si­ty of Toron­to
Tel: 416–946-3818
E‑mail: mcguffin@rotman.utoronto.ca