Head of Cognition & Behavior Research Group
Dr. Matthias Unfried
Dr. Matthias Unfried is a behavioral economist whose research focuses on individual decision-making under uncertainty and information asymmetry, as well as the role of social norms and social preferences. His work centers on the decisions of consumers and top managers. Since 2020, he has led the Cognition & Behavior Research Group at the Nuremberg Institute for Market Decisions (NIM), where he conducts research at the intersection of Behavioral Economics, Judgment and Decision Making, and Consumer Behavior.
His interdisciplinary research combines controlled laboratory and online experiments with modern econometric techniques to investigate individual economic decision-making processes and their underlying mechanisms.
He has published in internationally recognized peer-reviewed journals, including the Journal of Product Innovation Management, European Economic Review, Energy Policy, and Emotion, and has presented his work at leading international conferences such as the European Conference on Information Systems (ECIS) and the Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences (HICSS).
Prior to his current role, he held various research positions at NIM and served as a research associate at the Friedrich-Alexander University Erlangen-Nuremberg, where he earned his doctorate in Economics (Dr. rer. pol.).
Selected Publications
Freisinger, E., Schneider, S. & Unfried, M. (2024). The AI Augmented Crowd: How Human Crowdvoters Adopt AI (or not). Journal of Product Innovation Management, 41(4): 865–889. https://doi.org/10.1111/jpim.12708
Scherer, K. R., Dieckmann, A., Unfried, M., Ellgring, H., & Mortillaro, M. (2021). Investigating appraisal-driven facial expression and inference in emotion communication. Emotion, 21(1), 73-95. https://psycnet.apa.org/doi/10.1037/emo0000693
Dieckmann, A., Grimm, V., Unfried, M., Utikal, V., & Valmasoni, L. (2016). On trust in honesty and volunteering among Europeans: Cross-country evidence on perceptions and behavior. European Economic Review, 90, 225-253. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.euroecorev.2016.01.011
Leepa, C., & Unfried, M. (2013). Effects of a cut-off in feed-in tariffs on photovoltaic capacity: Evidence from Germany. Energy Policy, 56, 536-542. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.enpol.2013.01.018