BY MARYAM SHAHID (CS/II)
Assoc. Prof. Emin Karagözoğlu is a faculty member of the Department of Economics, the Aysel Sabuncu Brain Research Center and the Graduate Program in Neuroscience at Bilkent University. After earning a BA degree from Boğaziçi University, he went on to receive an MA from Pennsylvania State University in the US and a PhD from Maastricht University in the Netherlands. In 2015, he was presented with a Distinguished Young Scientist Award by the Science Academy of Turkey and a Distinguished Teaching Award by Bilkent University.
Why did you become a professor?
When I was doing my undergraduate studies, I realized that I like to read, think, write, discuss and teach. Given that, academic life was an obvious choice. I also like the autonomy that academia provides in one’s daily life, in the sense that most of the time you’re your own boss. If you feel like you don’t want to work today, you can do that, and compensate for it a few days later. If in the middle of the night, some idea just pops up, you can sit down and work until morning. Then, if you don’t have an early class to teach, you can go easy on yourself. I also knew that I wanted to share as much time as I could with my family; in business life, it’s not so easy to balance work and family. That’s another aspect of academia that drew me to it.
Why/how did you choose Bilkent?
In economics, if you do a PhD at an internationally recognized institution, there’s a very centralized job market that takes place once a year. After applying for many advertised jobs, you’re called for an interview and a campus visit. At the end of such a process, I had some prospects in Germany and Israel, and also an offer from Bilkent. I chose Bilkent because I knew that it was the best place in Turkey for my research field, as it has a tradition of excellence in economic theory, economic design and game theory. So, the choice wasn’t too difficult, and nine years after making that decision, I’m still happy to be here.
What projects are you working on currently?
My fields of expertise are behavioral economics, experimental economics and game theory; more precisely, most of my work is on bargaining. I explore research questions related to bargaining using multiple methodologies. If I were to pick one sub-agenda, I would say that I work on modeling reference-dependent behavior in bargaining situations. A great deal of research consistently shows us that people sometimes do not evaluate monetary payoffs on their own, but rather have a reference point in mind and evaluate payoffs with respect to it. I study that reference point’s formation process, its cognitive and strategic aspects, and the factors influencing it in bargaining interactions.
What’s the coolest thing about your work?
Bargaining is everywhere. It’s not like only people who are involved in business or international relations do it. Even my little boy, five years old, negotiates with me, whether it’s about how many cartoons he’ll watch or how many chocolates he’ll have. Everyone, every day, negotiates something. If you investigate something that’s not part of your daily life, it may restrict your research to your lab or your office. However, in my case, the whole world is a lab. I find inspiration when I go to a bazaar, read the news, watch a movie or interact with my kids.
Would you share a turning point in your career?
When I was at university for my undergraduate education, I liked open-economy macroeconomics; I found topics related to crises and exchange rates very interesting. Then I started my master’s at Boğaziçi and took four courses on mathematical economics from Prof. Remzi Sanver, subsequently a dear friend, and found that I really liked game theory, economic design and theoretical modeling; and moreover some of my existential questions regarding “what we are doing” found more satisfactory answers. I guess I can say that was one turning point, because I was somewhat “converted” from someone who liked macroeconomics into a microeconomic theorist. The second turning point came when I moved from Penn State to Maastricht. At Maastricht, there weren’t many PhD students in the program in my cohort, and the research atmosphere in Europe was more collaborative than individualistic. Only two weeks after entering the program, I started writing a paper with two faculty members, which later became my first publication. By the time I finished my PhD, I already had one publication, one revise and resubmit, and four working papers. I was very lucky to be in such a productive and collaborative environment.
What’s one piece of information from your field that you think everyone should know?
A very important concept is opportunity cost. Everyone should constantly be aware that their choices have an opportunity cost: in doing something, you’re giving up an alternative. Whenever you take an action, you should think, “What am I giving up by doing this?”
When and where do you do your best thinking?
It depends on the depth of my thinking and level of focus. If I’m really into a question that’s intriguing and troubling me, I can think about it anywhere.
What distracts you?
If I’m really focused, almost nothing can distract me. If I’m not so focused, anything can distract me: administrative duties, emails I need to respond to, this noise, that noise. If I’m at a desirable level of focus, I can isolate myself from the world.
What’s the most common misconception about your work?
When I tell my family and friends that I’m an economics professor, the first thing they ask is what I think will happen with regard to the stock market, inflation, unemployment, growth, etc. However, the discipline of economics is huge and has many sub-disciplines; I work in the fields of game theory, experimental economics and behavioral economics. Hence, I can’t give an expert opinion on the exchange rate or the stock market.
What do you like to do when you’re not working?
I’m a big movie freak. I watch a lot of movies; I even try to have a regular movie-watching schedule. Sometimes what my wife and I do is choose a genre for a month and watch films in that genre. Say, “Haneke month,” “Bergman month” or “post-2000 Turkish cinema month.” I also read a lot, mostly fiction. Other than that, I walk around campus with my kids. I’m also into photography.
What’s your all-time favorite movie?
I have this list of films that I call “movies I can watch every year,” including “The Godfather,” “Pulp Fiction,” “The Shining,” “Goodfellas,” “Lost Highway,” “Persona,” “There Will Be Blood,” “Kader” and “Uzak.” There are also many others, but let’s keep it short.
Which books have influenced you the most, and why?
I mostly read fiction, because I feel like I’m so much into life and reality, and I see reading books as a way of escaping to a different reality. A few books that popped up in my mind in answer to this question are “The Death of a Government Clerk,” “The Amok Runners,” “Esir Şehir Üçlemesi” and “Fathers and Sons.”
If you weren’t a professor, what career would you choose?
I’d possibly like to work in a research development department in an R&D-intensive company, which isn’t too far from being in academia. The other thing I’d fancy is being a director or a novelist. I see so many parallels between what I’m doing and what they’re doing – building models.
What’s the secret to leading a happy life?
Andrei Tarkovsky once said in an interview, “The world is not a place to which we come to be happy.” I agree. The world is a place of challenge, both internal and external. We challenge our bad selves, hoping that our good selves will win. I believe happiness is not the ultimate goal of this life, but I would also say we need to be happy to be up for that challenge. One should follow the path he finds right for himself and try to acquire energy through success. But you also shouldn’t be too hard on yourself in times of failure; you need to remind yourself that everything happens for a reason. What seems to be a local failure might be a global success in the end.
If you could go back to your undergraduate/graduate student years, what advice would you give your younger self?
One thing I tell my students is that this is a time when you’re making an investment into the rest of your life. I want them to be constantly aware that choosing the thing you’ll become, your line of work, is one of the most important decisions in life. If you make the right decision, you’ll spend at least 30 to 40 years in that field of work, for at least 5 or 6 hours every day. You don’t spend that much time with anyone or anything else, so this is a very important decision, and one that needs a lot of thought and care. So, open your eyes, do lots of sampling, and make the most of your university years.