Behavioral Economics: Toward a New Economics by Integration with Traditional Economics

Description

This book is intended as a textbook for a course in behavioral economics for advanced undergraduate and graduate students who have already learned basic economics. The book will also be useful for introducing behavioral economics to researchers. Unlike some general audience books that discuss behavioral economics, this book does not take a position of completely negating traditional economics. Its position is that both behavioral and traditional economics are tools that have their own uses and limitations. Moreover, this work makes clear that knowledge of traditional economics is a necessary basis to fully understand behavioral economics. Some of the special features compared with other textbooks on behavioral economics are that this volume has full chapters on neuroeconomics, cultural and identity economics, and economics of happiness. These are distinctive subfields of economics that are different from, but closely related to, behavioral economics with many important overlaps with behavioral economics. Neuroeconomics, which is developing fast partly because of technological progress, seeks to understand how the workings of our minds affect our economic decision making. In addition to a full chapter on neuroeconomics, the book provides explanations of findings in neuroeconomics in chapters on prospect theory (a major decision theory of behavioral economics under uncertainty), intertemporal economic behavior, and social preferences (preferences that exhibit concerns for others). Cultural and identity economics seek to explain how cultures and people’s identities affect economic behaviors, and economics of happiness utilizes measures of subjective well-being. There is also a full chapter on behavioral normative economics, which evaluates economic policies based on findings and theories of behavioral economics. Front Matter ....Pages i-xvii Front Matter ....Pages 1-1 What Is Behavioral Economics? (Masao Ogaki, Saori C. Tanaka)....Pages 3-22 What Is Neuroeconomics? (Masao Ogaki, Saori C. Tanaka)....Pages 23-30 Front Matter ....Pages 31-31 Economic Behavior Under Uncertainty (Masao Ogaki, Saori C. Tanaka)....Pages 33-54 Prospect Theory (Masao Ogaki, Saori C. Tanaka)....Pages 55-70 Bounded Rationality (Masao Ogaki, Saori C. Tanaka)....Pages 71-82 Front Matter ....Pages 83-83 Intertemporal Behavior (Masao Ogaki, Saori C. Tanaka)....Pages 85-103 Learning Theory and Experiments in Neuroeconomics (Masao Ogaki, Saori C. Tanaka)....Pages 105-114 Social Preferences (Masao Ogaki, Saori C. Tanaka)....Pages 115-140 Front Matter ....Pages 141-141 Culture and Identity (Masao Ogaki, Saori C. Tanaka)....Pages 143-171 The Economics of Happiness (Masao Ogaki, Saori C. Tanaka)....Pages 173-184 Normative Behavioral Economics (Masao Ogaki, Saori C. Tanaka)....Pages 185-207 Back Matter ....Pages 209-211