Behavioral Economics

This is an elective course for students Majoring in Economics.

This course will introduce theories and paradigms that address the concerns raised by evidence that neoclassical models of decision making may be inadequate positive descriptions of human behavior.

We will study behavior under nonstandard preferences, e.g. present bias, nonstandard beliefs, e.g., optimism, and nonstandard decision making, e.g., costly attention. These theories will deal with both single person decision problems as well as strategic interactions. We will also study evidence of nonstandard behavior in both the field and the lab, and relevant policy discussions.

Prerequisites: ECO 2400 (Econometrics)