News

Filip Matějka Has Received the Consolidator Grant from the European Research Council

9 December, 2020

Filip Matějka, a researcher and member of the CERGE-EI faculty, has received the prestigious Consolidator Grant from the European Research Council. The project "Attention" continues to explore the imperfections of human decision-making and its impact on society. The Czech economist succeeded in competing with more than two and a half thousand applications from 23 countries.

Filip's research builds around the fact that the detailed functioning of the world is indescribable and incomprehensible to us, and the model of imperfect individual decision-making extends, for example, to the behavior of governments in regulating the market as well as to the medical environment.

"We're going to examine how and why people simplify their worldview. For example, many people believe it's good to invest and reinvest a lot during a crisis to help get out of it. It's a simplification because it can work in many crises, but probably not in the current one. We study theorems that we cannot apply to every situation," Matějka explained.

"In another part of the project, we will try to help physicians to save the attention that they pay to patients. Modern technology generates so much data about patients, which physicians are unable to process, so they often ignore them. We want to help physicians get the most useful information. Then the rest of us will be treated even better," he described, regarding another goal of the project.

CERGE-EI Director Sergey Slobodyan believes that Filip's success will increase interest in the social sciences. "Only the best researchers can achieve such support of the European Research Council. Therefore, it is well-earned support for Filip. His scientific results are so far truly extraordinary," said Slobodyan. "I believe that Filip's success will encourage other talented researchers and bring attention to the social sciences," he added.

The Council selected Filip for the second time in the international competition of applicants for ERC grants. In 2015, he was the first to receive an ERC Starting grant for social science research in the Czech Republic.