Economics - Behavioral Economics

Catalog description

Decisions link our thoughts to our actions and as a result define who we are and who people think we are. This makes decision making a fundamental life skill. But, can we make better decisions? This course will introduce you to the science of decision making that has developed as scholars including biologists, economists, mathematicians, philosophers, psychologists, and others have sought to answer this very question. Over the course of the semester we will examine what we have learned so far such as how people predict and mispredict events, how people make decisions and how their decisions can be quite irrational from one perspective but simultaneously appear quite reasonable, how people bargain and why they sometimes choose to cooperate and other times not, and why negotiating can be so difficult. (Same as PSYC 413.) Prerequisite: PSYC 104 or ECON 142; MATH 101 or MATH 103 or MATH 104, or eligibility for MATH 115 or MATH 125 or MATH 126.