Book contents
- Principles of Behavioral Economics
- Principles of Behavioral Economics
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Figures
- Tables
- Preface
- Acknowledgments
- 1 What Is Behavioral Economics?
- 2 What Motivates Us?
- 3 Why Is Life So Full of Problems for Us to Try to Solve?
- 4 How Do We Acknowledge Problems and Assess Options?
- 5 How Do We Deal with Uncertainty and Ambiguity?
- 6 How Do We Search for Solutions to Problems?
- 7 Why Do Some Things Matter More Than Others?
- 8 How Do We Choose?
- 9 How Can Firms and Governments Influence Our Choices?
- 10 What Determines the Productivity of an Organization?
- 11 How Does the Competitive Process Work?
- 12 Are There Any Behavioral Insights for Macroeconomists?
- 13 Can We Be Happy without Destroying the Environment?
- References
- Index
1 - What Is Behavioral Economics?
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 18 October 2022
- Principles of Behavioral Economics
- Principles of Behavioral Economics
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Figures
- Tables
- Preface
- Acknowledgments
- 1 What Is Behavioral Economics?
- 2 What Motivates Us?
- 3 Why Is Life So Full of Problems for Us to Try to Solve?
- 4 How Do We Acknowledge Problems and Assess Options?
- 5 How Do We Deal with Uncertainty and Ambiguity?
- 6 How Do We Search for Solutions to Problems?
- 7 Why Do Some Things Matter More Than Others?
- 8 How Do We Choose?
- 9 How Can Firms and Governments Influence Our Choices?
- 10 What Determines the Productivity of an Organization?
- 11 How Does the Competitive Process Work?
- 12 Are There Any Behavioral Insights for Macroeconomists?
- 13 Can We Be Happy without Destroying the Environment?
- References
- Index
Summary
This chapter sets out the methodology of the approach to behavioral economics developed in this book, emphasizing its rejection of the static “as if” approach of conventional economics and the latter’s view of rationality. It introduced the idea of a decision cycle (problem recognition, search, evaluation, choice, implementation and hindsight review), while emphasizing that how decisions are taken depends on their context. This leads to a pluralistic analysis where alternative perspectives share the idea that everything we do is based upon systems of operating rules and routines. The chapter explores the research methods of behavioral economics, including the roles of anecdotes, introspection, textual sources, questionnaires, experiments and computer simulations. Before closing by outlining the rest of the book, it introduces the evolutionary economics and evolutionary psychology perspectives that are closely related to the pre-1980 approaches to behavioral economics and kept building upon them after 1980 when behavioral economics was refashioned by Thaler with a focus on “heuristics and biases” that took the conventional approach to economic rationality as its reference point.
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- Information
- Principles of Behavioral EconomicsBringing Together Old, New and Evolutionary Approaches, pp. 1 - 24Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2022