Jean-Robert Tyran is a Professor of Economics at the University of Vienna. He specialises in behavioural and experimental economics, political economy, and public economics. His research explores how bounded rationality and social preferences shape markets, democracy, and collective decision-making, with current projects addressing democratic resilience, immigration, and perceptions of the welfare state.

Dr. Jean-Robert Tyran, MAE, is a Professor of Economics at the University of Vienna and the director of the Vienna Center for Experimental Economics. A member of Academia Europaea, he also holds a part-time professorship at the University of Copenhagen. He is a fellow of the Centre for Economic Policy Research (CEPR) in London and CESifo in Munich and holds regular visiting professorships at Keio University in Tokyo and Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne.

Tyran’s research explores how institutions such as markets and democracy function when people have limited rationality and preferences that extend beyond their own material interests. His work spans several interconnected areas, including collective decision-making, political economy, public economics, and the role of social norms and social capital in shaping behaviour.

Tyran received his doctorate in economics from the University of Zurich in 1997 and held academic positions at the Universities of St. Gallen and Copenhagen before joining the University of Vienna in 2010. At Vienna, he served as Dean of the Faculty of Business, Economics and Statistics and as Vice-Rector for Research and International Affairs from 2018 to 2022.

He also regularly advises and evaluates academic institutions and research organisations. His current activities in Switzerland include chairing the Scientific Advisory Board of the Faculty of Business and Economics at the University of Basel and serving as a member of both the Swiss National Science Foundation’s (SNSF) evaluation panel “Economic Sciences” and the Swiss Accreditation Council.

His current projects address the resilience of democracy in the face of fake news, emotional politics, and vote buying; political acceptance of immigration; misperceptions of the welfare state; and workplace norms in Japan. These projects connect fundamental questions about human behaviour with contemporary challenges facing economies and societies.