Behavioral Economics

Catalog description

Economics operates under the assumption that individuals act rationally. However, empirical evidence (observation of human decisions) oftentimes contradicts this assumption. Rather than discounting the contributions that economics has made in advancing understanding of human behavior, the emergence of behavioral economics allows economists to adjust assumptions that capture how individuals act irrationally in predictable ways. In this course, we discuss elements of predictably irrational behavior, such as procrastination, risky behavior, altruism, and more, which will be applied towards many subfields in economics.