Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-76fb5796d-x4r87 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-04-26T03:52:16.029Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

1 - What Is Behavioral Economics?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 October 2022

Peter E. Earl
Affiliation:
University of Queensland
Get access

Summary

This chapter sets out the methodology of the approach to behavioral economics developed in this book, emphasizing its rejection of the static “as if” approach of conventional economics and the latter’s view of rationality. It introduced the idea of a decision cycle (problem recognition, search, evaluation, choice, implementation and hindsight review), while emphasizing that how decisions are taken depends on their context. This leads to a pluralistic analysis where alternative perspectives share the idea that everything we do is based upon systems of operating rules and routines. The chapter explores the research methods of behavioral economics, including the roles of anecdotes, introspection, textual sources, questionnaires, experiments and computer simulations. Before closing by outlining the rest of the book, it introduces the evolutionary economics and evolutionary psychology perspectives that are closely related to the pre-1980 approaches to behavioral economics and kept building upon them after 1980 when behavioral economics was refashioned by Thaler with a focus on “heuristics and biases” that took the conventional approach to economic rationality as its reference point.

Type
Chapter
Information
Principles of Behavioral Economics
Bringing Together Old, New and Evolutionary Approaches
, pp. 1 - 24
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2022

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure coreplatform@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×