Prizes

EADM recognizes outstanding contributions to the field through three prizes and awards. Open a prize to read the eligibility rules, the submission requirements and the list of former winners.

De Finetti Award Since 1995, EADM’s prize for outstanding research by a PhD student: EUR 750, a certificate and a talk at the next SPUDM.

The European Association for Decision Making’s de Finetti Award has, since 1995, recognized outstanding research by PhD students in the area of decision making. The winner will receive a prize of 750 Euros and a certificate, and will be asked to make a presentation at the upcoming SPUDM conference.

Eligibility is limited to PhD students who had not completed their PhD by the time of the previous SPUDM conference. The student must be the sole or first author, and the work should primarily represent the student’s contribution. For co-authored papers, a signed statement (PDF) from the co-author(s) is required, confirming that the student is the primary source of ideas and the main author of this paper. Both published and unpublished papers are eligible for submission. However, dissertation format will not be considered, though articles based on a dissertation are encouraged. Each applicant may submit only one paper.

Submission requirements: (a) the paper, (b) a statement (400 words or less) outlining the candidate’s academic status and containing a brief summary of the scientific contribution of the submitted paper, (c) a letter from co-authors (if applicable).

About Bruno de Finetti

Bruno de Finetti (1906–1985) was born in Innsbruck to Italian parents and grew up in Trentino and Milan. He first enrolled in engineering at the Milan Polytechnic, switched to mathematics at the University of Milan, and graduated in 1927 with a thesis on Mendelian population genetics that already contained what is now known as the de Finetti diagram. He then spent four years at the national statistics institute in Rome before joining the insurer Assicurazioni Generali in Trieste in 1931, where he worked as an actuary for fifteen years while teaching at the universities of Trieste and Padua. He held the chair of financial mathematics at Trieste, moved to the University of Rome in 1954, and from 1961 until his retirement in 1976 held its chair in the calculus of probabilities. He died in Rome on 20 July 1985.

His lasting contribution is the subjective, or Bayesian, view of probability, worked out in a series of papers in the late 1920s and 1930s and set out most fully in the 1937 lectures “La prévision: ses lois logiques, ses sources subjectives”. For de Finetti a probability is not a property of the world but a person’s degree of belief, made precise by the betting odds they are prepared to accept; the only constraint is coherence, the requirement that no combination of bets can be arranged against them that loses for certain. From this he derived the laws of probability and his representation theorem for exchangeable events, which shows how beliefs are revised in the light of experience and remains a foundation of Bayesian statistics. “Probability does not exist”, the opening line of his two-volume Theory of Probability, sums up the position.

De Finetti’s insistence that probability and utility describe how a reasonable person should judge and choose under uncertainty made him one of the intellectual ancestors of behavioural decision research, and the founders of the SPUDM conferences counted him among their inspirations. EADM’s award for the best paper by a PhD student has carried his name since 1995.

Former winners

Year	Winner	Affiliation
2023	Christian T. Elbæk	Aarhus University, Denmark
2021	Mark Himmelstein	Fordham University, USA
2019	Christina Leuker	Max Planck Institute for Human Development, Berlin, Germany
2017	Johann Majer	Leuphana University, Germany
2015	Jared Hotaling	University of Basel, Switzerland
2013	Dan Raphael Schley	Ohio State University, USA
2011	Shoham Choshen-Hillel	Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel
2009	Benjamin Scheibehenne	University of Basel, Switzerland
2007	Xianchi Dai	INSEAD, France
2005	Loran Nordgren	Universiteit van Amsterdam, The Netherlands
2003	Greg Barron	Technion - Israel Institute of Technology, Israel
2001	Martijn Willemsen	Eindhoven Technical University, The Netherlands
2001	Nicola Bown	University of Leeds, United Kingdom
1999	Mandeep K. Dhami	City University London, United Kingdom
1997	Johanna Kordes-de Vaal	Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, The Netherlands
1995	Peter Roelofsma	Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, The Netherlands

Jane Beattie Scientific Recognition Award Created in 2006 in memory of Jane Beattie, it honours innovation in decision research by scholars 5 to 10 years post-PhD: EUR 1,000, a certificate and a talk at SPUDM.

In 2006, EADM created the Jane Beattie Scientific Recognition Award to honour the memory of our late colleague, Jane Beattie. The award is intended for researchers who have recently completed the first stages of their careers – defined operationally by those who are 5 to 10 years post-PhD. The award will be for a research paper that deals with the topic of decision making as broadly understood within the SPUDM tradition.

The award is bestowed in recognition of “innovation in decision research”, as broadly understood within the SPUDM tradition. To be eligible for this award, candidates must have completed their PhDs no sooner than 5 years before the end of the most recent SPUDM meeting and no more than 10 years before the same date.

Winners will receive a prize of 1,000 euros, a certificate, and be asked to make a presentation of their research at SPUDM.

Submission requirements: (a) a statement of 500 words or less that makes the case for the candidate’s innovation, (b) one paper in which the innovation is presented for a scientific audience, (c) a copy of the candidate’s curriculum vitae, and (d) a statement as to when, and from where, the candidate received their PhD.

About Jane Beattie

Jane Beattie was a British psychologist whose short career left a clear mark on judgment and decision research. After her first degree in Britain she went to the United States for graduate work in psychology at the University of Pennsylvania, where she began a long collaboration with Jonathan Baron. She then became Assistant Professor of Behavioral Science at the University of Chicago Graduate School of Business and a member of its Center for Decision Research. After several years in Chicago she and her husband, David Weir, returned to England, where both took up positions at the University of Sussex and she became a Lecturer in Experimental Psychology.

Her research asked how people cope with difficult decisions. With Baron she studied how the range of options on offer distorts the weight people give to an attribute when trading it off against another (Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 1991). With Baron, John Hershey and Mark Spranca she introduced the notion of decision attitude, the finding that people sometimes prefer to have a choice made for them rather than choose themselves, and traced this decision aversion to anticipated regret, fear of blame and concern for fairness (Journal of Behavioral Decision Making, 1994). With the economist Graham Loomes she examined whether paying participants real money changes the risky choices they make in experiments, a question that still shapes experimental practice (Journal of Risk and Uncertainty, 1997).

Jane Beattie was an active member of both SJDM and EADM and served on the EADM Executive Board from 1995 to 1997. She died of cancer in March 1997, aged 36. Later that year her colleagues in SJDM established the Jane Beattie Memorial Fund, which since 1999 has supported travel between Europe and North America for decision researchers and is now sponsored jointly with EADM. In 2006 EADM created this award in her memory, given to researchers at the career stage she had reached.

Former winners

Year	Winner	Affiliation	Committee
2023	Lukasz Walasek	University of Warwick, Great Britain	Eldad Yechiam (chair), Gaelle Vallee-Tourangeau, Michael Schulte-Mecklenbeck
2021	Sudeep Bhatia	University of Pennsylvania, United States	Ido Erev (chair), Shaul Shalvi, Mandeep Dhami, Bettina von Helversen, Thomas Wallsten
2019	Shaul Shalvi	University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands	Andreas Glöckner (chair), Mehdi Moussaid, Arndt Bröder, Peter Ayton, Cilia Witteman
2017	Mehdi Moussaïd	Max Planck Institute for Human Development, Germany	Barbara Summers (chair), Timothy J. Pleskac, Nigel Harvey, Eldad Yechiam
2015	Timothy J. Pleskac	Max Planck Institute for Human Development, Germany	Cilia Witteman (chair), Mirta Galesic, Fergus Bolger, Anton Kühberger
2013	Mirta Galesic	Max Planck Institute for Human Development, Germany	Nicolao Bonini (chair), Fergus Bolger, Danny Oppenheimer, Barbara Fasolo
2011	Danny Oppenheimer	UCLA Anderson School of Management, United States	Ilana Ritov (chair), Marcel Zeelenberg, Ellen Peters, Nicolao Bonini
2009	Ellen Peters	Decision Research, Oregon, United States	Robin Hogarth (chair), Marcel Zeelenberg, Nigel Harvey, Ilana Ritov
2007	Marcel Zeelenberg	Tilburg University, The Netherlands	Robin Hogarth (chair), Nigel Harvey, Oswald Huber

Lifetime Contribution Award Recognises exceptional, sustained service to the decision-making community by researchers 20 or more years post-PhD: free lifetime membership, a certificate and a talk at SPUDM.

The EADM Lifetime Contribution Award is bestowed in recognition of lifetime contribution which is broadly considered as: contribution to the decision-making community by “exceptional service to the community of decision-making researchers”, as broadly understood within the EADM tradition. This includes, but is not limited to, the mentoring and supervising of students and early career scholars who have proceeded to have independent, successful careers in the field; valorization of own or others’ research to have positive impact beyond the field (including other fields and/or policy and practice); and making a sustained and enduring contribution to EADM (e.g., through organization of EADM-related events including SPUDM and service to the JDM journal).

Eligible candidates need to be 20 years or more post-PhD and to have presented in SPUDM or other EADM events at least three times during the past 15 years.

Winners will receive a lifetime (free) membership in EADM, a certificate, and will be asked to make a presentation of their research or a historical perspective at SPUDM.

Importantly: nomination is by the candidate or by another person on their behalf.

Submission requirements: for self-submissions, please send your CV and a 1-2 page (maximum) justification letter. To submit the candidacy of another person, please send just a 1-2 page (maximum) justification letter.

Former winners

Year	Winner	Affiliation
2025	Karl Halvor Teigen	University of Oslo, Norway
2023	Robin M. Hogarth	Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Spain