040075 UK Principles of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (BA) (2019S)

The course provides an overview on the most important topics in Behavioral and Experimental Economics. Behavioral economics attempts to make economics a more relevant and powerful science of human behavior by integrating insights from psychology and the social sciences into economics. Experimental economics adapts methods developed in the natural sciences to study economic behavior. Experiments are valuable in testing to what extent the integration of insights from other disciplines into economics is necessary and fruitful.

Behavioral and Experimental Economics is a vibrant field of research in economics and sheds new light on many old and important issues in economics. The field has received wide recognition in recent years, for example by the award of the Nobel Prize in Economics 2002 to Daniel Kahneman and Vernon Smith (the Nobel Prize winners Reinhard Selten 1994, Elinor Ostrom in 2009, and Alvin Roth 2012 have also importantly contributed to Experimental Economics; the winners George Akerlof 2001 and Robert Shiller 2013 have contributed to Behavioral Economics). The field is rapidly growing. While this course can therefore not completely review every aspect of the field, it nonetheless tries to present an overview of important topics.

In particular, the course will discuss the following topics:
• Introduction: Behavioral Economics & Experimental Method
• Individual Choice: Biases & Heuristics
• Markets and Strategic Thinking
• Fairness and Cooperation
• Happiness Economics

In discussing these topics, the course addresses the following questions:
1) What are the advantages and limitations of experimental economics?
2) How important are deviations from the assumptions of full rationality and strict self-interest in determining outcomes of economic interaction?

I argue that identifying individual-level “anomalies” is not sufficient to demonstrate their economic and social importance. Instead, it must be analyzed how institutions mitigate and multiply these anomalies. A broad range of institutions, including markets, bargaining and voting is discussed.