Dr Markus Schaffner
This person does not currently hold a position at QUT.
Biography
Behavioural economist and data scientist, applying leading edge computational tools, advanced statistical techniques and Big Data analysis to the study of human interactions. Along with the talent to match the right tool to any data challenge, I have the expertise, skills and experience to find innovative solutions, to communicate clearly with technical and non-technical stakeholders and to develop robust implementations.
- Curriculum Vitae (short, resume style)
Personal details
Keywords
Behavioural Economics, Experimental Economics, Econometrics / Statistics, Heart Rate Variability (HRV), Computer Science, Big Data / Digital Economy, Neuroeconomics/Physiological Measurements, Social Comparison and Social Interaction, Experimental Software (CORAL), Communication
Discipline
Applied Economics, Econometrics
Field of Research code, Australian and New Zealand Standard Research Classification (ANZSRC), 2008
Qualifications
- Doctor of Philosophy (Queensland University of Technology)
- Degree in Sociology, Computer Science and Economics
Teaching
Teaching Interests:
- Quantitative Methods (EFB222/EFN422)
- Experimental and Behavioural Economics (EFB332)
Experience
Experience
- Built and maintained the faculty’s behavioural economics computer laboratory to study human interaction. Devised and implemented the standard operating procedures, reduced the lead-time to implement a new experimental protocol from several weeks to just days.
- Developed a novel toolset to analyse behavioural and physiological data from heart rate variability measurements in joint maximum likelyhood estimations on the university’s high-performance computing cluster utilising Matlab and Stata.
- Core developer of Coral, a flexible framework to run interactive economic experiments with JavaScript, HTML5 and Java in the laboratory, online with spring:boot and on the iPad with a native client in Objective-C (https://github.com/mas802/coral-econ).
- Built up the department’s Big Data analysis capabilities. Deployed data collection and analytics tools on the National Academic Cloud (NeCTAR). Used Cloudera, Apache Spark and custom semantic analysis tools in Java to analyse text-based information from leading newspapers, Google N-gram dataset, social media, Kickstarter and the patent record.
- Acted as IT facilitator and expert for statistical methods for staff and research students in the department. Worked closely with the faculty IT Coordinator to improve access to ITC resources significantly and provided formal and informal training.
- Founding member of the Queensland Behavioural Economics Group, the second largest behavioural economics research group in Australia. Provided the technical expertise for research and industry projects and online data collection facilities (laboratory and online experiments, surveys, and web crawlers) for research and industry projects.
- Consulted for industry partners providing them with behavioural insights and preformed statistical analysis as well as training for staff (e.g. for the Australian Investment and Securities Commission (ASIC), Suncorp Insurance, the Brisbane Airport Corporation, the Australian Tax Office, the National Research Institute of Papua New Guinea and IP Australia).
- Core developer of Statdoc, a Javadoc like automatic documentation tool for statistics projects written in Java (https://github.com/mas802//statdoc).
- Developed and taught units in statistics and behavioural economics.
Research Reports:
- Basu, A., Dulleck, U., Engler, Y., and Schaffner, M. Investing in hybrid securities: Explanations and interventions based on behavioural economics.Australien Securities and Investment Commission, report 427. 2015.
- Dulleck, U., Koessler, A.-K., Schaffner, M., and Torgler, B. Improving communication with directors of firms in liquidation. Australien Securities and Investment Commission, report 428. 2015.
IT Skills:
- Oracle Certified Professional – Java SE 7 Programmer
- Oracle Certified Associate – Java SE 8 Programmer
- Expert in: Stata, Java, Spring Boot, JDBC, SQL, XML, JSON, PHP, HTML, CSS, JavaScript, Eclipse, LaTeX.
- Experienced in: Matlab, Objective-C (XCode, iOS), JUnit, bash, Regular Expressions, jQuery, D3.js, Git, Linux, Apache.
- Working Knowledge of: R, SPSS, Python, Design Patterns, OpenGL, Tomcat, Cloudera, Apache Spark, NoSQL, Azure, AWS EC2.
- https://github.com/mas802/ https://itunes.apple.com/au/developer/802.ch/id338515943
Publications
- Chan H, Frey B, Gallus J, Schaffner M, Torgler B, Whyte S, (2016) External influence as an indicator of scholarly importance, CESifo Economic Studies, 62 (1) p170
- Kandasamy N, Hardy B, Page L, Schaffner M, Graggaber J, Powlson A, Fletcher P, Gurnell M, Coates J, (2014) Cortisol shifts financial risk preferences, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 111 (9) p3608
- Chan H, Frey B, Gallus J, Schaffner M, Torgler B, Whyte S, (2014) Do the best scholars attract the highest speaking fees? An exploration of internal and external influence, Scientometrics, 101 (1) p793
- Dulleck U, Schaffner M, Torgler B, (2014) Heartbeat and economic decisions: Observing mental stress among proposers and responders in the ultimatum bargaining game, PLoS One, 9 (9) p1
- Frey B, Schaffner M, Schmidt S, Torgler B, (2013) Do employees care about their relative income position? Behavioral evidence focusing on performance in professional team sport, Social Science Quarterly, 94 (4) p912
- Fooken J, Schaffner M, (2013) The role of psychological and physiological factors in decision making under risk and in a dilemma, Proceedings of the 28th Annual Congress of the European Economic Association and the 67th European Meeting of the Econometric Society p1
- Dulleck U, Ristl A, Schaffner M, Torgler B, (2011) Heart rate variability, the autonomic nervous system, and neuroeconomic experiments, Journal of Neuroscience, Psychology, and Economics, 4 (2) p117
- Kabanoff B, Schaffner M, Bo S, (2011) From bust to boom: towards a strategic cognition perspective on Australian mining firms' adaption, Presented at: Annual Australian and New Zealand Academy of Management Conference p1
- Torgler B, Schaffner M, Macintyre A, (2010) Tax compliance, tax morale, and governance quality. In J Alm, B Torgler & J Martinez-Vazquez, Developing alternative frameworks for explaining tax compliance, Routledge p141
- Torgler B, Demir I, Macintyre A, Schaffner M, (2008) Causes and Consequences of Tax Morale: An Empirical Investigation, Economic Analysis and Policy, 38 (2) p313
QUT ePrints
For more publications by Markus, explore their research on ePrints (our digital repository).