Course Preview | Behavioral Economics: Consumer Choice and Decision Making from Wharton Executive Education
2:13 min
30
Welcome to this program. In this program, you'll learn about the exciting sub-field of behavioral economics that's at the intersection of economics and psychology. What is behavioral economics? Standard economics assumes agents are selfish optimizers who only care about themselves and fully process all information to make the best possible decisions at all times. We know people are not actually like that. Behavioral economics takes these types of limitations seriously. It ask how people actually behave, whether they're always selfish, whether they sometimes make mistakes. In learning how real people actually behave, behavioral economics also uncovers how behavior can be changed. By policymakers aiming to improve decision making and the outcomes of the people that they serve, by employers hoping to encourage their employees to work harder and serve their customers better, by organizations hoping to take advantage of suboptimal behavior of its naive consumers.
In this program, I will expose you to cutting-edge research that uncovers the insights of behavioral economics. You'll learn about choice architecture, how subtle changes in the decision environment can have big impacts on behavior. You'll learn about social forces and how they motivate individuals to be more generous and to work harder. You'll learn about individuals' aversion to inequality and how they're reciprocal, acting generously towards those who have been generous towards them. You'll learn about a variety of other forces that employers use to motivate or demotivate individuals. And you'll learn about how people bias the present and how this leads them to make inconsistent choices. And finally, you'll learn about how the salience of information impacts individual's decisions, both as consumers and how firms take advantage of that and as individuals in society and how the government responds. By the end of the program, you'll have a grasp of behavioral economics and how you can use it in your professional life.
In this program, I will expose you to cutting-edge research that uncovers the insights of behavioral economics. You'll learn about choice architecture, how subtle changes in the decision environment can have big impacts on behavior. You'll learn about social forces and how they motivate individuals to be more generous and to work harder. You'll learn about individuals' aversion to inequality and how they're reciprocal, acting generously towards those who have been generous towards them. You'll learn about a variety of other forces that employers use to motivate or demotivate individuals. And you'll learn about how people bias the present and how this leads them to make inconsistent choices. And finally, you'll learn about how the salience of information impacts individual's decisions, both as consumers and how firms take advantage of that and as individuals in society and how the government responds. By the end of the program, you'll have a grasp of behavioral economics and how you can use it in your professional life.
