Edited by Alain Samson with a Foreword

Total Page:16

File Type:pdf, Size:1020Kb

Edited by Alain Samson with a Foreword Edited by Alain Samson With a Foreword by George Loewenstein and Rory Sutherland The Behavioral Economics Guide 2014 1st Edition Author information: Alain Samson (Editor) George Loewenstein (Foreword) Rory Sutherland (Foreword) Phil Barden, Francesco Bogliacino, Leigh Caldwell, Cristiano Codagnone, Tom Ewing, Gerhard Fehr, George Gaskell,, Asit Gupta, Elina Halonen, Juliet Hodges, Moritz Jäger, Alain Kamm, John Kearon, Francisco Lupiáñez-Villanueva, Henry Stott, Giuseppe A. Veltri (Contributing authors) Design and layout by Elina Halonen. Cover design adapted from Tilly Patsalis. Proofing by Mark Jones and Leigh Caldwell. Copyright © by the authors All Rights Reserved Requests for permission to reproduce materials from this work should be sent to [email protected] or directly to contributing authors. Suggested citation: Samson, A. (Ed.)(2014). The Behavioral Economics Guide 2014 (with a foreword by George Loewenstein and Rory Sutherland) (1st ed.). Retrieved from http://www.behavioraleconomics.com. Suggested citation for individual sections/authors: [Author(s)] (2014). [Chapter/Section Title]. In A. Samson (Ed.), The Behavioral Economics Guide 2014 (with a foreword by George Loewenstein and Rory Sutherland) (1st ed.)(pp. nn-nn). Retrieved from http://www.behavioraleconomics.com. II Behavioral Economics Guide – 2014 With Contributions By: III Behavioral Economics Guide – 2014 Contents FOREWORD George Loewenstein and Rory Sutherland: An Exchange ................................................................................................................................ VI PART 1 - THE BASICS An Introduction to Behavioral Economics .............................................................................................................................................................. 1 Rational Choice ................................................................................................................................................................................................................................ 1 Prospect Theory .............................................................................................................................................................................................................................. 2 Bounded Rationality ........................................................................................................................................................................................................................ 2 Dual-System Theory ....................................................................................................................................................................................................................... 4 Temporal Dimensions .................................................................................................................................................................................................................... 6 Social Dimensions ........................................................................................................................................................................................................................... 7 Summary and Implications ............................................................................................................................................................................................................ 9 Selected Behavioral Economics Concepts ............................................................................................................................................................ 13 References ..................................................................................................................................................................................................................... 28 PART 2 - RESOURCES Books Read by Behavioral Economics Group Members ................................................................................................................................... 35 Scholarly Journals with Behavioral Economics Content .................................................................................................................................... 37 Economics Journals ....................................................................................................................................................................................................................... 37 Psychology Journals ....................................................................................................................................................................................................................... 39 Marketing/Management Journals ............................................................................................................................................................................................... 42 Multidisciplinary Journals ............................................................................................................................................................................................................. 42 Postgraduate Programs in Behavioral Economics and Behavioral/Decision Science (taught in English) .......................................... 46 United States .................................................................................................................................................................................................................................. 46 United Kingdom ............................................................................................................................................................................................................................. 47 The Netherlands ............................................................................................................................................................................................................................ 48 Other Europe ................................................................................................................................................................................................................................. 48 Asia-Pacific ....................................................................................................................................................................................................................................... 49 PART 3 - APPLIED PERSPECTIVES Psychology and Behavioral Economics in Practice .............................................................................................................................................. 50 Nudging in the World of International Policymaking (Cristiano Codagnone, Francesco Bogliacino, Giuseppe A. Veltri, Francisco Lupiañez-Villanueva and George Gaskell) ................................................................................................................................................................. 51 Anlene: Habit Loop and Nudges Drive Brand Penetration and Frequency (Asit Gupta) ................................................................................... 59 Turning Human Understanding into Business Advantage (John Kearon and Tom Ewing) .................................................................................. 65 The Power of Rank: Behavioral Insights into Product Pricing (Henry Stott) ........................................................................................................ 72 Brands as Frames (Phil Barden)....................................................................................................................................................................................................... 78 The Behavioral Change Matrix – A Tool for Evidence-Based Policy Making (Gerhard Fehr, Alain Kamm and Moritz Jäger) ......................... 85 How Behavioral Economics Can Make People Happy (Elina Halonen and Leigh Caldwell) ................................................................................ 92 Beyond Academia: How Psychology Has Been Adopted in Advertising and Communications (Juliet Hodges) ....................................................100 APPENDIX Author Profiles .......................................................................................................................................................................................................... 106 Contributing Organizations ................................................................................................................................................................................... 110 IV Behavioral Economics Guide – 2014 Acknowledgements The editor would like to thank Benny Cheung, Gerhard Fehr, George Loewenstein, Roger Miles, Alexandra Sirianni, Rory Sutherland and Orlando Wood for their helpful feedback. V Behavioral Economics Guide – 2014 FOREWORD George Loewenstein and Rory Sutherland: An Exchange George Loewenstein to Rory Sutherland: Dear Rory, As you know, Alain Samson asked us to write a foreword for his Behavioral Economics (BE) Guide, hoping to gain the perspective of two people applying the science (if I can be so presumptuous) of BE in the academic/public and private sectors. I’m sure that Alain would appreciate some colorful fireworks to illuminate his guide, so, as the representative of academia, let me begin with a challenge: I’ve
Recommended publications
  • When Does Behavioural Economics Really Matter?
    When does behavioural economics really matter? Ian McAuley, University of Canberra and Centre for Policy Development (www.cpd.org.au) Paper to accompany presentation to Behavioural Economics stream at Australian Economic Forum, August 2010. Summary Behavioural economics integrates the formal study of psychology, including social psychology, into economics. Its empirical base helps policy makers in understanding how economic actors behave in response to incentives in market transactions and in response to policy interventions. This paper commences with a short description of how behavioural economics fits into the general discipline of economics. The next section outlines the development of behavioural economics, including its development from considerations of individual psychology into the fields of neurology, social psychology and anthropology. It covers developments in general terms; there are excellent and by now well-known detailed descriptions of the specific findings of behavioural economics. The final section examines seven contemporary public policy issues with suggestions on how behavioural economics may help develop sound policy. In some cases Australian policy advisers are already using the findings of behavioural economics to advantage. It matters most of the time In public policy there is nothing novel about behavioural economics, but for a long time it has tended to be ignored in formal texts. Like Molière’s Monsieur Jourdain who was surprised to find he had been speaking prose all his life, economists have long been guided by implicit knowledge of behavioural economics, particularly in macroeconomics. Keynes, for example, understood perfectly the “money illusion” – people’s tendency to think of money in nominal rather than real terms – in his solution to unemployment.
    [Show full text]
  • Property in Housing Lee Anne Fennell
    University of Chicago Law School Chicago Unbound Kreisman Working Paper Series in Housing Law and Working Papers Policy 2013 Property in Housing Lee Anne Fennell Follow this and additional works at: https://chicagounbound.uchicago.edu/ housing_law_and_policy Part of the Law Commons Chicago Unbound includes both works in progress and final versions of articles. Please be aware that a more recent version of this article may be available on Chicago Unbound, SSRN or elsewhere. Recommended Citation Lee Anne Fennell, "Property in Housing" (Kreisman Working Papers Series in Housing Law and Policy No. 13, 2013). This Working Paper is brought to you for free and open access by the Working Papers at Chicago Unbound. It has been accepted for inclusion in Kreisman Working Paper Series in Housing Law and Policy by an authorized administrator of Chicago Unbound. For more information, please contact [email protected]. CHICAGO PUBLIC LAW AND LEGAL THEORY WORKING PAPER NO. 426 KREISMAN WORKING PAPER ON HOUSING LAW AND POLICY NO. 13 PROPERTY IN HOUSING Lee Anne Fennell THE LAW SCHOOL THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO April 2013 This paper can be downloaded without charge at the Public Law and Legal Theory Working Paper Series: http://www.law.uchicago.edu/academics/publiclaw/index.html and The Social Science Research Network Electronic Paper Collection. Academia Sinica Law Journal No. 12 March 2013 Property in Housing Lee Anne Fennell Suggested citation format: Footnote: Lee Anne Fennell, Property in Housing , 12 ACADEMIA SINICA L.J. 31, 31-78 (2013). Reference : Fennell, Lee Anne. 2013. Property in Housing. Academia Sinica Law Journal 12:31-78.
    [Show full text]
  • Mindful Economics: the Production, Consumption, and Value of Beliefs
    Journal of Economic Perspectives—Volume 30, Number 3—Summer 2016—Pages 141–164 Mindful Economics: The Production, Consumption, and Value of Beliefs Roland Bénabou and Jean Tirole n the economic models of old, agents had backward-looking expectations, arising from simple extrapolation or error-correction rules. Then came the I rational-expectations revolution in macroeconomics, and in microeconomics the spread and increasing refinements of modern game theory. Agents were now highly sophisticated information processors, who could not be systematically fooled. This approach reigned for several decades until the pendulum swung back with the rise of behavioral economics and its emphasis on “heuristics and biases” (as in Tversky and Kahneman 1974). Overconfidence, confirmation bias, distorted prob- ability weights, and a host of other “wired-in” cognitive mistakes are now common assumptions in many areas of economics. Over the last decade or so, the pendulum has started to swing again toward some form of adaptiveness, or at least implicit purposefulness, in human cognition. In this paper, we provide a perspective into the main ideas and findings emerging from the growing literature on motivated beliefs and reasoning. This perspec- tive emphasizes that beliefs often fulfill important psychological and functional needs of the individual. Economically relevant examples include confidence in ones’ abilities, moral self-esteem, hope and anxiety reduction, social identity, polit- ical ideology and religious faith. People thus hold certain beliefs in part because ■ Roland Bénabou is Theodore A. Wells ‘29 Professor of Economics and Public Affairs, Princ- eton University, Princeton, New Jersey and a Senior Fellow, Canadian Institute for Advanced Research, Toronto, Canada.
    [Show full text]
  • Memory, Attention, and Choice
    Memory, Attention, and Choice Pedro Bordalo, Nicola Gennaioli, Andrei Shleifer1 Revised May 7, 2019 (original version 2015) Abstract. Building on the textbook description of associative memory (Kahana 2012), we present a model of choice in which options cue recall of similar past experiences. Recall shapes valuation and choice in two ways. First, recalled experiences form a norm, which serves as an initial anchor for valuation. Second, salient quality and price surprises relative to the norm lead to large adjustments in valuation. The model provides a unified account of many well documented choice puzzles including experience effects, projection and attribution biases, background contrast effects, and context- dependent willingness to pay. The results suggest that well-established psychological processes – memory-based norms and attention to surprising features – are key to understanding decision-making. 1 The authors are from University of Oxford, Universita Bocconi, and Harvard University, respectively. We are grateful to Dan Benjamin, Paulo Costa, Ben Enke, Matt Gentzkow, Sam Gershman, Thomas Graeber, Michael Kahana, Spencer Kwon, George Loewenstein, Sendhil Mullainathan, Josh Schwartzstein, Jesse Shapiro, Jann Spiess, Linh To, and Pierre- Luc Vautrey for valuable comments. Shleifer thanks the Sloan Foundation and the Pershing Square Venture Fund for Research on the Foundations of Human Behavior for financial support. 1 1. Introduction Memory appears to play a central role in even the simplest choices. Consider a thirsty traveler thinking of whether to look for a shop to buy a bottle of water at the airport. He automatically retrieves from memory similar past experiences, including the pleasure of quenching his thirst and the prices he paid before, and decides based on these recollections.
    [Show full text]
  • An Economic Sociological Look at Economics
    An Economic Sociologial Look at Economics 5 An Economic Sociological Look at Economics By Patrik Aspers, Sebastian Kohl, Jesper an impact on essentially all strands of economics over the Roine, and Philipp Wichardt 1 past decades. The fact that game theory is not (only) a subfield but a basis for studying strategic interaction in Introduction general – where ‘strategic’ does not always imply full ra- tionality – has made it an integral part of most subfields in New economic sociology can be viewed as an answer to economics. This does not mean that all fields explicitly use economic imperialism (Beckert 2007:6). In the early phase game theory, but that there is a different appreciation of of new economic sociology, it was common to compare or the importance of the effects (strategically, socially or oth- debate the difference between economics and sociology. erwise) that actors have on one another in most fields of The first edition of the Handbook of Economic Sociology economics and this, together with other developments, (Smelser/Swedberg 1994:4) included a table which com- has brought economics closer to economic sociology. pared “economic sociology” and “main-stream econom- ics,” which is not to be found in the second edition (Smel- Another point, which is often missed, is the impact of the ser/Swedberg 2005). Though the deletion of this table was increase in computational power that the introduction of due to limited space, one can also see it as an indication of computers has had on everyday economic research. The a gradual shift within economic sociology over this pe- ease by which very large data materials can be analyzed riod.2 has definitely shifted mainstream economics away from “pure theory” toward testing of theories with more of a That economic sociology, as economic anthropology, was premium being placed on unique data sets, often collected defined in relation to economics is perhaps natural since by the analyst.
    [Show full text]
  • Edited by Alain Samson with a Foreword by George Loewenstein
    Edited by Alain Samson With a Foreword by George Loewenstein and Rory Sutherland The Behavioral Economics Guide 2014 1st Edition Author information: Alain Samson (Editor) George Loewenstein (Foreword) Rory Sutherland (Foreword) Phil Barden, Francesco Bogliacino, Leigh Caldwell, Cristiano Codagnone, Tom Ewing, Gerhard Fehr, George Gaskell,, Asit Gupta, Elina Halonen, Juliet Hodges, Moritz Jäger, Alain Kamm, John Kearon, Francisco Lupiáñez-Villanueva, Henry Stott, Giuseppe A. Veltri (Contributing authors) Design and layout by Elina Halonen. Cover design adapted from Tilly Patsalis. Proofing by Mark Jones and Leigh Caldwell. Copyright © by the authors All Rights Reserved Requests for permission to reproduce materials from this work should be sent to [email protected] or directly to contributing authors. Suggested citation: Samson, A. (Ed.)(2014). The Behavioral Economics Guide 2014 (with a foreword by George Loewenstein and Rory Sutherland) (1st ed.). Retrieved from http://www.behavioraleconomics.com. Suggested citation for individual sections/authors: [Author(s)] (2014). [Chapter/Section Title]. In A. Samson (Ed.), The Behavioral Economics Guide 2014 (with a foreword by George Loewenstein and Rory Sutherland) (1st ed.)(pp. nn-nn). Retrieved from http://www.behavioraleconomics.com. II Behavioral Economics Guide – 2014 With Contributions By: III Behavioral Economics Guide – 2014 Contents FOREWORD George Loewenstein and Rory Sutherland: An Exchange ...............................................................................................................................
    [Show full text]
  • 14.160: Behavioral Economics Syllabus – Fall 2017 Thurs 4:00 to 7:00 Pm E51-361
    14.160: Behavioral Economics Syllabus – Fall 2017 Thurs 4:00 to 7:00 pm E51-361 Instructors: Frank Schilbach, E52-560 Email: [email protected] Office hours: Sign up at http://economics.mit.edu/faculty/fschilb/office Gautam Rao, E52-540 Email: [email protected] Office hours: By appointment Graduate Teaching Assistant: Chishio Furukawa Email: [email protected] Recitation: Fri 10:30-11:30am, E52-324 Office hours: TBA Course overview: This class covers recent topics in behavioral economics, with an emphasis on empirical applications and tests. Topics include deviations from the standard neoclassical model in terms of (i) preferences (time and risk preferences, reference dependence, and social preferences), (ii) beliefs and learning (overconfidence, projection bias, and attribution bias), and (iii) decision-making (cognition, attention, framing, and persuasion), as well as (iv) market reactions to such deviations. Applications will cover a wide range of fields, including labor and public economics, industrial organization, health economics, finance, and development economics. The main course objectives are as follows: 1) Obtain exposure to the frontier of empirical research in behavioral economics 2) Learn how to critically assess a rapidly evolving literature and how to develop novel ideas that contribute to it 3) Learn how to test (behavioral) economic theory using field experiments and non- experimental data 4) Develop and present a research proposal, as well as give feedback to others The course is designed for first- and second-year PhD students in economics. It is meant to help launch students into conducting empirical research in behavioral economics, or to incorporate behavioral economics into their research in other fields.
    [Show full text]
  • Behavioral Economics in Context Applications for Development, Inequality & Discrimination, Finance, and Environment
    Behavioral Economics In Context Applications for Development, Inequality & Discrimination, Finance, and Environment By Anastasia C. Wilson An ECI Teaching Module on Social and Environmental Issues in Economics Global Development Policy Center Boston University 53 Bay State Road Boston, MA 02155 bu.edu/gdp Economics in Context Initiative, Global Development Policy Center, Boston University, 2020. Permission is hereby granted for instructors to copy this module for instructional purposes. Suggested citation: Wilson, Anastasia C. (2020) “Behavioral Economics In Context: Applications for Development, Inequality & Discrimination, Finance, and Environment.” An ECI Teaching Module on Social and Economic Issues, Economics in Context Initiative, Global Development Policy Center, Boston University, 2020. Students may also download the module directly from: http://www.bu.edu/eci/education-materials/teaching-modules/ Comments and feedback from course use are welcomed: Economics in Context Initiative Global Development Policy Center Boston University 53 Bay State Road Boston, MA 02215 http://www.bu.edu/eci/ Email: [email protected] NOTE – terms denoted in bold face are defined in the KEY TERMS AND CONCEPTS section at the end of the module. BEHAVIORAL ECONOMICS IN CONTEXT TABLE OF CONTENTS 1. INTRODUCTION ........................................................................................................ 4 1.1 The History and Development of Behavioral Economics .......................................................... 5 1.2 Behavioral Economics Toolkit:
    [Show full text]
  • Behavioral Economics: Past, Present, Future
    Behavioral Economics: Past, Present, Future Colin F. Camerer Division of Humanities and Social Sciences 228-77 Caltech Pasadena, CA 91125 [email protected] George Loewenstein Department of Social and Decision Sciences Carnegie-Mellon University Pittsburgh PA 15213 [email protected] draft: 10/25/02 Behavioral economics increases the explanatory power of economics by providing it with more realistic psychological foundations. This book consists of representative recent articles in behavioral economics.1 This chapter is intended to provide an introduction to the approach and methods of behavioral economics, and to some of its major findings, applications, and promising new directions. It also seeks to fill some unavoidable gaps in the chapters’ coverage of topics. What Behavioral Economics Tries To Do At the core of behavioral economics is the conviction that increasing the realism of the psychological underpinnings of economic analysis will improve economics on its own terms -- generating theoretical insights, making better predictions of field phenomena, and suggesting better policy. This conviction does not imply a wholesale rejection of the neoclassical approach to economics based on utility maximization, equilibrium, and efficiency. The neoclassical approach is useful because it provides economists with a theoretical framework that can be applied to almost any form of economic (and even non-economic) behavior, and it makes 1Since it is a book of advances, many of the seminal articles which influenced those collected here are not included, but are noted below and are widely reprinted elsewhere. 1 refutable predictions. Many of these predictions are tested in the chapters of this book, and rejections of those predictions suggest new theories.
    [Show full text]
  • Richard Thaler and the Rise of Behavioral Economics
    Richard Thaler and the Rise of Behavioral Economics Nicholas Barberis Yale University April 2018∗ Abstract Richard Thaler was awarded the 2017 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences for his contributions to behavioral economics. In this article, I review and discuss these contributions. JEL classification: B2, D9, G1 Keywords: endowment effect, prospect theory, mental accounting, nudge ∗I am grateful to Hunt Allcott, Ingvild Almas, James Choi, Stefano DellaVigna, Keith Ericson, Owen Lamont, Ulrike Malmendier, Matthew Rabin, and Jesse Shapiro for helpful discussions about the content of this article. 1 I. Introduction From the 18th century to the first half of the 20th century, the leading economists of the day – figures such as Adam Smith, John Maynard Keynes, and Irving Fisher – were known to bring aspects of human psychology into their analysis of the economy. By the middle of the 20th century, however, this practice was less common, and with the advent of the rational expectations revolution in the 1960s, economists began to focus almost exclusively on models with the same, tightly-specified assumptions about individual psychology: that people have rational beliefs, and that they make decisions according to Expected Utility. In the early 1980s, a small group of economists began to argue that the rational ex- pectations revolution had gone too far, and that to understand many important economic phenomena, it was critical to develop new models that made assumptions about human be- havior that were psychologically more realistic, and that, in particular, allowed for less than fully rational thinking. This message was roundly dismissed at first, sometimes in scornful terms, but it gradually gained traction.
    [Show full text]
  • Strangers on a Plane: Context-Dependent Willingness to Divulge Sensitive Information
    Strangers on a Plane: Context-Dependent Willingness to Divulge Sensitive Information LESLIE K. JOHN ALESSANDRO ACQUISTI GEORGE LOEWENSTEIN New marketing paradigms that exploit the capabilities for data collection, aggre- gation, and dissemination introduced by the Internet provide benefits to consumers but also pose real or perceived privacy hazards. In four experiments, we seek to understand consumer decisions to reveal or withhold information and the relation- ship between such decisions and objective hazards posed by information reve- lation. Our central thesis, and a central finding of all four experiments, is that disclosure of private information is responsive to environmental cues that bear little connection, or are even inversely related, to objective hazards. We address un- derlying processes and rule out alternative explanations by eliciting subjective judgments of the sensitivity of inquiries (experiment 3) and by showing that the effect of cues diminishes if privacy concern is activated at the outset of the ex- periment (experiment 4). This research highlights consumer vulnerabilities in nav- igating increasingly complex privacy issues introduced by new information tech- nologies. he Internet, according to a New York Magazine article, readily available and searchable. Many online retailers re- T has made privacy “an artifact—quaint and naı¨ve.” “We cord customers’ click streams and have developed sophis- are all,” as the author expressed it, “eternally onstage” ticated techniques to make educated guesses about the cus- (Nussbaum 2007). Public records that were previously dif- tomers’ characteristics. Moreover, beyond these data, which ficult to access, such as home tax information, are now are collected covertly and without explicit consent, many people voluntarily post vast amounts of information on the Leslie K.
    [Show full text]
  • 1 Tightwads and Spendthrifts SCOTT I. RICK CYNTHIA E. CRYDER GEORGE LOEWENSTEIN
    1 Tightwads and Spendthrifts SCOTT I. RICK CYNTHIA E. CRYDER GEORGE LOEWENSTEIN* 2 Scott I. Rick ([email protected]) is a visiting professor of Operations and Information Management at the Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA 19104. Cynthia E. Cryder ([email protected]) is a doctoral student, and George Loewenstein ([email protected]) is the Herbert A. Simon Professor of Economics & Psychology, both at the Department of Social and Decision Sciences, Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, PA 15213. This article is based on the first author’s dissertation. For helpful comments, the authors thank the editor, the associate editor, three anonymous reviewers, Dan Ariely, Eloise Coupey, Robyn Dawes, Michael DeKay, J. Wesley Hutchinson, Eric Johnson, Uzma Khan, Jennifer Lerner, Julie Ozanne, Kathleen Vohs, Joachim Vosgerau, Roberto Weber, Christian Wheeler, Patti Williams, Gal Zauberman, and participants at the 2005 JDM conference in Toronto, the 2006 JDM pre-conference at SPSP in Palm Springs, the 2006 BDRM conference in Los Angeles, the Second Annual Whitebox Advisors Graduate Student Conference at Yale, and the 2007 SCP conference in Las Vegas. We also thank NBC’s WCAU affiliate, The Globe and Mail, and John Tierney of The New York Times for their invaluable assistance in collecting data. This research was supported in part by grants from the Center for Behavioral Decision Research at Carnegie Mellon and the Russell Sage Foundation, an NSF Graduate Research Fellowship to Rick, and a MacArthur Foundation network grant to Loewenstein. 3 Consumers often behave differently than they would ideally like to behave. We propose that an anticipatory pain of paying drives “tightwads” to spend less than they would ideally like to spend.
    [Show full text]