Description
Book SynopsisGeorge Loewenstein is one of the pioneers of the rapidly growing field of behavioral economics. For over twenty years he has been working at the intersection of economics and psychology and is one of the few people of whom it can be said that their work is equally respected and well known within both disciplines. This book brings together a selection of his papers focusing on what he calls exotic preferences-- the disparate motives that drive human behavior. In addition to covering the history and methodology of behavioral economics, they also touch on a wide range of fascinating topics such as the motives that drive extreme athletes, our propensity to want to get unpleasant experiences out of the way so we can focus on the more pleasant, and the psychology of curiosity. There are also papers on social preferences, discussing the importance of perceptions of fairness in interpersonal interactions, intertemporal choice-- the tradeoffs between costs and benefits occurring at different po
Table of ContentsIntroduction ; PART I GENERAL PERSPECTIVES, HISTORY, AND METHODS ; 1. Because it is There: The Challenge of Mountaineering...for Utility Theory ; 2. The Economics of Meaning ; 3. The Fall and Rise of Psychological Explanations in the Economics of Intertemporal Choice ; 4. Adam Smith, Behavioral Economist ; 5. Experimental Economics from the Vantage-Point of Behavioral Economics ; 6. The Psychology of Curiosity: A Review and Reinterpretation ; PART II SOCIAL PREFERENCES ; 7. Social Utility and Decision Making in Interpersonal Contexts ; 8. Explaining the Bargaining Impasse: The Role of Self-Serving Biases ; PART III BASIC RESEARCH ON PREFERENCES ; 9. Preference Reversals Between Joint and Separate Evaluations of Options: A Review and Theoretical Analysis ; 10. "Coherent Arbitrariness": Stable Demand Curves Without Staple Preferences ; PART IV PREDICTING TASTES AND FEELINGS ; 11. A Bias in the Prediction of Tastes ; 12. Mispredicting the Endowment Effect: Understimation of Owners' Selling Prices by Buyer's Agents ; 13. Projection Bias in Predicting Future Utility ; PART V INTERTEMPORAL CHOICE ; 14. Anticipation and the Valuation of Delayed Consumption ; 15. Anomalies in Intertemporal Choice: Evidence and an Interpretation ; 16. Preferences for Sequences of Outcomes ; 17. The Red and the Black: Mental Accounting of Savings and Debt ; PART VI EMOTIONS ; 18. Out of Control: Visceral Influences on Behavior ; 19. Risk as Feelings ; 20. Investment Behavior and the Negative Side of Emotion ; 21. Heart Strings and Purse Strings: Carryover Effects of Emotions on Economic Decisions ; 22. Separate Neural Systems Value Immediate and Delayed Monetary Rewards
