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Behavioral economics incorporates insights from other disciplines, such as psychology, sociology and neuroscience, into economic models. These insights often induce economists to modify their theories of how people behave individually, socially, and in markets expanding the concept of Homo Economicus to accommodate such phenomena as altruism, fairness, identity, and time-varying discounting. The course will draw on psychological topics such as impulsivity, loss-aversion, over-confidence, self-serving biases, and hedonics; sociological topics such as status, identity, and social networks; and new evidence on social preferences, cooperation, trust, and punishment from neuroeconomics. The course will focus on developing public policy recommendations for such behavioral phenomena as credit card borrowing, portfolio choice, retirement saving, procrastination, addiction, crime, discrimination, affirmative action, unemployment, charitable giving and public health. Classroom experiments and demonstrations will be occasionally conducted to illustrate key theoretical concepts and empirical regularities.
COURSE FORMAT: Lecture/Discussion
Level: UGRD Credit: 1 Gen Ed Area Dept: SBS ECON Grading Mode: Student Option
Prerequisites: ECON210 Links to Web Resources For This Course.
Last Updated on MAR-30-2006
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