Behavioral Economics and Social Policy Design

Catalog description

This course will introduce students to the field's of behavioral economics and its application to designing social policies concerning health, education, childcare, voting, poverty, financial stability, legal and regulatory frameworks, etc. Behavioral economics extends the classical textbook theory of how the "rational" economic individual - often referred to as homo economicus - makes choices to include insights from psychology, biology, anthropology, sociology and other fields to increase the explanatory power of economic theories. While classical economics is still a useful tool for any social scientist to possess, behavioral economics, in the words of one of the fields founding fathers, Richard Thaler (2015), "is more interesting and more fun than regular economics. It is the un-dismal science."