14.13 Economics and Psychology

As taught in: Spring 2004

Level:

Undergraduate

Instructors:

Prof. Xavier Gabaix

A woman selects apples at a fruit market.
A shopper chooses the best apples at the market. (Image courtesy of Makkai Bence. Used with permission.)

Course Features

Course Highlights

This course site features a complete set of lecture notes.

Course Description

This course integrates psychological insights into economic models of behavior. It discusses the limitations of standard economic models and surveys the ways in which psychological experiments have been used to learn about preferences, cognition, and behavior. Topics include: trust, vengeance, fairness, impatience, impulsivity, bounded rationality, learning, reinforcement, classical conditioning, loss-aversion, over-confidence, self-serving biases, cognitive dissonance, altruism, subjective well-being, and hedonic adaptation. Economic concepts such as equilibrium, rational choice, utility maximization, Bayesian beliefs, game theory, and behavior under uncertainty are discussed in light of these phenomena.

*Some translations represent previous versions of courses.

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