In this book, David K. Levine questions the idea that behavioral economics is the answer to economic problems. He explores the successes and failures of contemporary economics both inside and outside the laboratory, and asks whether popular behavioral theories of psychological biases are solutions to the failures. The book not only provides an overview of popular behavioral theories and their history, but also gives the reader the tools for scrutinizing them.

Traditionally economists have based their economic predictions on the assumption that humans are super-rational creatures, using the information we are given efficiently and generally making selfish decisions that work well for us as individuals. Economists also assume that we're doing the very best we can possibly do - not only for today, but over our whole lifetimes too. But increasingly the study of behavioural economics is revealing that our lives are not that simple. Instead, our decisions are complicated by our own psychology. Each of us makes mistakes every day. We don't always know what's best for us and, even if we do, we might not have the self-control to deliver on our best intentions. We struggle to stay on diets, to get enough exercise and to manage our money. We misjudge risky situations. We are prone to herding: sometimes peer pressure leads us blindly to copy others around us; other times copying others helps us to learn quickly about new, unfamiliar situations. This Very Short Introduction explores the reasons why we make irrational decisions; how we decide quickly; why we make mistakes in risky situations; our tendency to procrastination; and how we are affected by social influences, personality, mood and emotions. The implications of understanding the rationale for our own financial behaviour are huge. Behavioural economics could help policy-makers to understand the people behind their policies, enabling them to design more effective policies, while at the same time we could find ourselves assaulted by increasingly savvy marketing. Michelle Baddeley concludes by looking forward, to see what the future of behavioural economics holds for us. ABOUT THE SERIES: The Very Short Introductions series from Oxford University Press contains hundreds of titles in almost every subject area. These pocket-sized books are the perfect way to get ahead in a new subject quickly. Our expert authors combine facts, analysis, perspective, new ideas, and enthusiasm to make interesting and challenging topics highly readable.

Behavioral economics has potential to offer novel solutions to some of today's most pressing public health problems: How do we persuade people to eat healthy and lose weight? How can health professionals communicate health risks in a way that is heeded? How can food labeling be modified to inform healthy food choices? Behavioral Economics and Public Health is the first book to apply the groundbreaking insights of behavioral economics to the persisting problems of health behaviors and behavior change. In addition to providing a primer on the behavioral economics principles that are most relevant to public health, this book offers details on how these principles can be employed to mitigating the world's greatest health threats, including obesity, smoking, risky sexual behavior, and excessive drinking. With contributions from an international team of scholars from psychology, economics, marketing, public health, and medicine, this book is a trailblazing new approach to the most difficult and important problems of our time.

Standard models in economics and finance usually assume that people are rational, self-interested maximisers, effectively co-ordinated via the invisible hand of the price mechanism. Whilst these approaches produce tractable, simple models, they cannot fully capture the uncertainties and instabilities that affect everyday choices in today’s complex world. Insights from the other social and behavioural sciences can help to fill the gap and behavioural economics is the subject which brings economics and finance together with psychology, neuroscience and sociology. Behavioural Economics and Finance introduces the reader to some of the key concepts and insights from this rich, inter-disciplinary approach to real-world decision-making.

The controversial science that claims to have revolutionised economics. For centuries, economics was dominated by the idea that we are rational individuals who optimise our own 'utility'. Then, in the 1970s, psychologists demonstrated that the reality is a lot messier. We don't really know what our utility is, and we care about people other than ourselves. We are susceptible to external nudges. And far from being perfectly rational we are prone to 'cognitive biases' with complex effects on decision-making, such as forgetting to prepare for retirement. David Orrell explores the findings from psychology and neuroscience that are shaking up economics - and that are being exploited by policy-makers and marketers alike, to shape everything from how we shop for food, to how we tackle societal happiness or climate change. Finally, he asks: is behavioural economics a scientific revolution, or just a scientific form of marketing?

Choice, Behavioural Economics and Addiction is about the theory, data, and applied implications of choice-based models of substance use and addiction. The distinction between substance use and addiction is important, because many individuals use substances but are not also addicted to them. The behavioural economic perspective has made contributions to the analysis of both of these phenomena and, while the major focus of the book is on theories of addiction, it is necessary also to consider the behavioural economic account of substance use in order to place the theories in their proper context and provide full coverage of the contribution of behavioural economics to this field of study. The book discusses the four major theories of addiction that have been developed in the area of economic science/behavioural economics. They are: . hyperbolic discounting . melioration . relative addiction . rational addiction The main objective of the book is to popularise these ideas among addiction researchers, academics and practitioners. The specific aims are to articulate the shared and distinctive elements of these four theories, to present and discuss the latest empirical work on substance abuse and addiction that is being conducted in this area, and to articulate a range of applied implications of this body of work for clinical, public health and public policy initiatives. The book is based on an invitation-only conference entitled, Choice, Behavioural Economics and Addiction: Theory, Evidence and Applications held at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, March 30 - April 1, 2001. The conference was attended by prominent scientists and scholars, representing a range of disciplines concerned with theories of addiction and their consequences for policy and practice. The papers in the book are based on the papers given at the above conference, together with commentaries by distinguished experts and, in many cases, replies to these comments by the presenters.

- Incorporates the latest experimental evidence from across economics, psychology and neuroscience to provide cutting-edge introduction for students. - Structured around three key settings – individuals, small groups and larger impersonal groups (e.g. markets) – this text provides a logical framework for the study of economic decision-making. - Includes discussion of emotions including fairness, trust, selfishness and altruism on both a micro and macro level to show how they can influence personal decision making as well as entire economies.

Winner of the Nobel Prize in Economics Get ready to change the way you think about economics. Nobel laureate Richard H. Thaler has spent his career studying the radical notion that the central agents in the economy are humans—predictable, error-prone individuals. Misbehaving is his arresting, frequently hilarious account of the struggle to bring an academic discipline back down to earth—and change the way we think about economics, ourselves, and our world. Traditional economics assumes rational actors. Early in his research, Thaler realized these Spock-like automatons were nothing like real people. Whether buying a clock radio, selling basketball tickets, or applying for a mortgage, we all succumb to biases and make decisions that deviate from the standards of rationality assumed by economists. In other words, we misbehave. More importantly, our misbehavior has serious consequences. Dismissed at first by economists as an amusing sideshow, the study of human miscalculations and their effects on markets now drives efforts to make better decisions in our lives, our businesses, and our governments. Coupling recent discoveries in human psychology with a practical understanding of incentives and market behavior, Thaler enlightens readers about how to make smarter decisions in an increasingly mystifying world. He reveals how behavioral economic analysis opens up new ways to look at everything from household finance to assigning faculty offices in a new building, to TV game shows, the NFL draft, and businesses like Uber. Laced with antic stories of Thaler’s spirited battles with the bastions of traditional economic thinking, Misbehaving is a singular look into profound human foibles. When economics meets psychology, the implications for individuals, managers, and policy makers are both profound and entertaining. Shortlisted for the Financial Times & McKinsey Business Book of the Year Award

Recent discoveries in psychology and neuroscience have improved our understanding of why our decision making processes fail to match standard social science assumptions about rationality. As researchers such as Daniel Kahneman, Amos Tversky, and Richard Thaler have shown, people often depart in systematic ways from the predictions of the rational actor model of classic economic thought because of the influence of emotions, cognitive biases, an aversion to loss, and other strong motivations and values. These findings about the limits of rationality have formed the basis of behavioral economics, an approach that has attracted enormous attention in recent years. This collection of essays applies the insights of behavioral economics to the study of nuclear weapons policy. Behavioral economics gives us a more accurate picture of how people think and, as a consequence, of how they make decisions about whether to acquire or use nuclear arms. Such decisions are made in real-world circumstances in which rational calculations about cost and benefit are intertwined with complicated emotions and subject to human limitations. Strategies for pursuing nuclear deterrence and nonproliferation should therefore, argue the contributors, account for these dynamics in a systematic way. The contributors to this collection examine how a behavioral approach might inform our understanding of topics such as deterrence, economic sanctions, the nuclear nonproliferation regime, and U.S. domestic debates about ballistic missile defense. The essays also take note of the limitations of a behavioral approach for dealing with situations in which even a single deviation from the predictions of any model can have dire consequences.

Three-time New York Times bestselling author Dan Ariely teams up with legendary The New Yorker cartoonist William Haefeli to present an expanded, illustrated collection of his immensely popularWall Street Journal advice column, “Ask Ariely”. Behavioral economist Dan Ariely revolutionized the way we think about ourselves, our minds, and our actions in his books Predictably Irrational, The Upside of Irrationality, and The Honest Truth about Dishonesty. Ariely applies this scientific analysis of the human condition in his “Ask Ariely” Q & A column in the Wall Street Journal, in which he responds to readers who write in with personal conundrums ranging from the serious to the curious: What can you do to stay calm when you’re playing the volatile stock market? What’s the best way to get someone to stop smoking? How can you maximize the return on your investment at an all-you-can-eat buffet? Is it possible to put a price on the human soul? Can you ever rationally justify spending thousands of dollars on a Rolex? In Ask Ariely, a broad variety of economic, ethical, and emotional dilemmas are explored and addressed through text and images. Using their trademark insight and wit, Ariely and Haefeli help us reflect on how we can reason our way through external and internal challenges. Readers will laugh, learn, and most importantly gain a new perspective on how to deal with the inevitable problems that plague our daily life.