Behavioral Economics

Catalog description

This course is an introduction to behavioral economics: incorporating insights from psychology into economics. Though behavioral economics is a relatively new field, it has already led to one Nobel Prize and is beginning to have a huge impact in finance, marketing, management, industrial organization, psychology, political science, and philosophy. In this course, we will study how behavioral economists explain a range of psychological and social phenomena, and how those explanations differ from standard economic ones. Likely topics include drug use, sex, crime, gambling, over-eating, overconfidence and procrastination. In particular, we will study various ways in which (apparent) irrationality influences people’s judgment and decision-making.