Congratulations, Kai Barron!

We are delighted, that Kai Barron, Research Fellow at the WZB, was awarded the 2026 ESA Young Scholar Prize. The award recognizes his significant methodological contributions to experimental economics.

The Economic Science Association (ESA) highlighted Kai Barron's "strong academic profile through creative methodological and empirical contributions to the experimental investigation of motivated belief updating, narratives, and discrimination mechanisms." His work has earned recognition through an increasing number of influential publications.

One example of his research at the WZB is the study on the “Lessons from South Africa’s alcohol ban”, in which he worked with an interdisciplinary team to examine the impact of the nationwide alcohol ban during the Covid-19 pandemic on violent crime and unnatural deaths. 

The Economic Science Association (ESA) is a professional organization devoted to economics as an observational science, using controlled experiments to learn about economic behavior. Once a year, the ESA Young Scholar Prize honors a young scholar whose work has made a major methodological contribution to experimental economics.

22/7/26, PW