Date: March 18, 2025 (Tuesday)

Time: 1pm – 2pm

New Venue: Room 723, 7/F Cheng Yu Tung Tower, The University of Hong Kong

Speaker: Arna Wömmel, Ph.D. candidate in Economics, University of Hamburg

The algorithmic fairness literature has primarily focused on reducing discrimination in the systems themselves, while often overlooking the role of human decision-makers in their application. This is surprising, since many legal frameworks require that humans retain the ultimate decision authority in high-stakes contexts, making the impact of fairness interventions dependent on whether and how they incorporate these fairness- aware algorithmic predictions. This raises two key questions: Do human decision-makers accept fairness-aware algorithmic recommendations, particularly when they themselves discriminate based on protected group membership? And how does this affect discrimination in decision outcomes?

Arna Wömmel is a final-year Ph.D. candidate in Economics within the German Research Foundation (DFG) Graduate Program in Philosophy, Politics, and Economics at the University of Hamburg. She is a PhD student fellow at the NYU School of Law Information Law Institute. Her research was awarded the Best Paper Prize in Technology, Privacy, and Information at the 2023 American Law & Economics Association Conference and the Theodore Eisenberg Prize at the 2024 Conference on Empirical Legal Studies. Her research applies behavioral economics to questions about the fairness of new technologies. Much of it studies how new technologies affect discrimination and inequality, especially when they support – rather than replace – humans. Methodologically, she uses behavioral experiments, household survey data, and natural language processing (NLP).

To register for the seminar, please go to https://hkuems1.hku.hk/hkuems/ec_regform.aspx?guest=Y&UEID=99115.

For inquiries, please contact Ms. Grace Chan at  / 3917 4727.