Author: Bianjun Xia Publisher: ISBN: Category : Decision making Languages : en Pages : 0
Book Description
The goal of my dissertation is to analyze individuals' behavior when they make choices over time and within a group. The first chapter is devoted to explaining some key time preference anomalies which are inconsistent with the standard discounted utility model. In the second chapter, I focus on how inter-personal comparisons would affect people's intertemporal choices. Finally, the last chapter studies how the concern for status affects the optimal risk sharing across individuals. The first chapter studies some key time preference anomalies. These include the time preference reversal characteristic of hyperbolic discounting, the magnitude effect and the extreme sign effect. I propose a simple explanation of discounting that accounts for these three anomalies simultaneously, within the context of the expected utility model with uncertainty, risk aversion and preference for precautionary saving. The second chapter develops an intertemporal model in which individuals care about consumption not only for its own sake but also for the status it implies. By putting an additive status term into the utility function, I show that the level of inequality in the initial wealth distribution affects individuals' saving and consumption behavior. The direction of the distortion in intertemporal choice relative to the standard model without status depends on the elasticity of intertemporal substitution in the utility from absolute consumption. I also analyze how changes in the initial wealth distribution affect saving. In the third chapter we develop a series of optimal social insurance models in which people care about both consumption per se and the status it implies. We show that the concern for status does impact the optimal contract under various information structures. Particularly, under complete information without commitment problem, the optimal contract may assign all the society resources to the minority group if the status term is convex enough. Under the limited enforcement regime, compared to the optimal allocation in the pure consumption model, it is optimal to transfer more resources to high income people when the status term is convex. Under moral hazard, the relatively lower status resulting from the higher effort level may make implementation of high effort level more difficult.
Author: George Loewenstein Publisher: ISBN: 9780199257065 Category : Business & Economics Languages : en Pages : 320
Book Description
George Loewenstein has been at the forefront of progress in bringing together the disciplines of economics and psychology. One area in which he has made a major contribution is in the analysis of intertemporal choice: the extent to which and reasons why we are prepared to defer some immediate benefit for a greater benefit at a later date. This volume includes Loewenstein's most important papers on the topic and an introduction which sets the papers in an overall framework, taking account of current work in this area.
Author: Christina A. Roberto Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA ISBN: 019939833X Category : Business & Economics Languages : en Pages : 385
Book Description
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.
Author: Publisher: Elsevier ISBN: 0444633898 Category : Business & Economics Languages : en Pages : 749
Book Description
Handbook of Behavioral Economics: Foundations and Applications presents the concepts and tools of behavioral economics. Its authors are all economists who share a belief that the objective of behavioral economics is to enrich, rather than to destroy or replace, standard economics. They provide authoritative perspectives on the value to economic inquiry of insights gained from psychology. Specific chapters in this first volume cover reference-dependent preferences, asset markets, household finance, corporate finance, public economics, industrial organization, and structural behavioural economics. This Handbook provides authoritative summaries by experts in respective subfields regarding where behavioral economics has been; what it has so far accomplished; and its promise for the future. This taking-stock is just what Behavioral Economics needs at this stage of its so-far successful career. Helps academic and non-academic economists understand recent, rapid changes in theoretical and empirical advances within behavioral economics Designed for economists already convinced of the benefits of behavioral economics and mainstream economists who feel threatened by new developments in behavioral economics Written for those who wish to become quickly acquainted with behavioral economics
Author: Richard H. Thaler Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company ISBN: 0393246779 Category : Business & Economics Languages : en Pages : 502
Book Description
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
Author: David A. Wise Publisher: University of Chicago Press ISBN: 0226903222 Category : Political Science Languages : en Pages : 428
Book Description
The Economics of Aging presents results from an ongoing National Bureau of Economic Research project. Contributors consider the housing mobility and living arrangements of the elderly, their labor force participation and retirement, the economics of their health care, and their financial status. The goal of the research is to further our understanding both of the factors that determine the well-being of the elderly and of the consequences that follow from an increasingly older population with longer individual life spans. Each paper is accompanied by critical commentary.
Author: Colin F. Camerer Publisher: Princeton University Press ISBN: 1400829119 Category : Business & Economics Languages : en Pages : 769
Book Description
Twenty years ago, behavioral economics did not exist as a field. Most economists were deeply skeptical--even antagonistic--toward the idea of importing insights from psychology into their field. Today, behavioral economics has become virtually mainstream. It is well represented in prominent journals and top economics departments, and behavioral economists, including several contributors to this volume, have garnered some of the most prestigious awards in the profession. This book assembles the most important papers on behavioral economics published since around 1990. Among the 25 articles are many that update and extend earlier foundational contributions, as well as cutting-edge papers that break new theoretical and empirical ground. Advances in Behavioral Economics will serve as the definitive one-volume resource for those who want to familiarize themselves with the new field or keep up-to-date with the latest developments. It will not only be a core text for students, but will be consulted widely by professional economists, as well as psychologists and social scientists with an interest in how behavioral insights are being applied in economics. The articles, which follow Colin Camerer and George Loewenstein's introduction, are by the editors, George A. Akerlof, Linda Babcock, Shlomo Benartzi, Vincent P. Crawford, Peter Diamond, Ernst Fehr, Robert H. Frank, Shane Frederick, Simon Gächter, David Genesove, Itzhak Gilboa, Uri Gneezy, Robert M. Hutchens, Daniel Kahneman, Jack L. Knetsch, David Laibson, Christopher Mayer, Terrance Odean, Ted O'Donoghue, Aldo Rustichini, David Schmeidler, Klaus M. Schmidt, Eldar Shafir, Hersh M. Shefrin, Chris Starmer, Richard H. Thaler, Amos Tversky, and Janet L. Yellen.
Author: Howard C. Kunreuther Publisher: Cambridge University Press ISBN: 0521845726 Category : Business & Economics Languages : en Pages : 343
Book Description
This book examines the behavior of individuals at risk and insurance industry policy makers involved in selling, buying and regulation.
Author: M. Grimm Publisher: Springer ISBN: 0230306624 Category : Business & Economics Languages : en Pages : 353
Book Description
With the current global crisis, high levels of volatility in trade, capital flows, commodity prices, aid, and the looming threat of climate change, this book brings together high-quality research and presents conceptual issues and empirical results to analyze the determinants of the vulnerability to poverty in developing countries.
Author: Bianjun Xia
Author: George Loewenstein
Author: Christina A. Roberto
Author: 
Author: Richard H. Thaler
Author: David A. Wise
Author: Colin F. Camerer
Author: Howard C. Kunreuther
Author: M. Grimm
Author: George Ainslie