Nina Mazar

I’m a behavioral scientist dedicated to advancing the science and practice of behavior change, focusing on topics ranging from consumer behavior to ethics to social & environmental impact.

I am part of the Thinkers50 Radar Class of 2023, was named one of “The 40 Most Outstanding B-School Profs Under 40 In The World” (Poets&Quants, 2014), and am a former president of the academic Society for Judgment and Decision Making.

In a nutshell, I investigate how cues in the environment affect how we think about products, prices, work, donations, and morality, and their implications for business, welfare, development, and policy. My research topics range from irrational attractions to free products to the paradoxes of green behavior, organ and blood donations, tax compliance, debt management, health equity, and misinformation.

I was nominated for the SSHRC Aurora Prize for “Outstanding New Researcher” in Canada, and am the recipient of several teaching and research awards, including the William F. O’Dell Award of AMA’s Journal of Marketing Research (for having made the most significant, long-term contribution to marketing theory, methodology, and/or practice), and, most recently, the 2023 Financial Times Responsible Business Education Award (for my co-authored work on nudging organ donor registrations).

I have published my research in leading academic journals like the Journal of Marketing Research, Journal of Marketing, Psychological Sciences, Review of Economic Studies, and the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Popular accounts of my work have appeared among others on NPR, BBC, in the New York Times, Financial Times, Wired, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, and Harvard Business Review, and my research has been featured in various New York Times bestsellers including Drive by Daniel Pink as well as Predictably Irrational, The Upside of Irrationality, The (Honest) Truth about Dishonesty, and Money and Sense by Dan Ariely.

Public engagements/talks include the Canada Revenue Agency, European Commission, Department of State, World Bank, OECD, Toyota, Google Ventures, BEworks, and IDEO.

Most recently, I acted as the senior behavioral scientist of the World Bank’s behavioral insights team (eMBeD) in Washington DC, which I helped initiate and I co-directed the Behavioral Economics in Action research center at Rotman (BEAR) – the first academic center in Canada dedicated to applying behavioral science to policy and organizations — as well as the Susilo Institute for Ethics in the Global Economy at Questrom.

I have been serving as advisor on boards of various governments and organizations. Past engagements include the Privy Council Office Innovation Hub for Behavioral Economics in Canada, the Austrian Minister for Family and Youth, Irrational Labs in San Francisco, CA, and the Martin Prosperity Institute with director Roger Martin, named the world’s #1 management thinker by Thinkers50).

Before joining academia I worked with a spin-off of KPMG as a management consultant in Germany. Before becoming a professor, I was a post-doctoral associate and lecturer in marketing at MIT Sloan School of Management and the MIT Media Lab eRationality Group. I’m also an alumni of the German Academic Scholarship Foundation (Studienstiftung des Deutschen Volkes).