Experiential Behavioral Economics Courses

This article describes the results of an experiential learning activity conducted at Cal Poly Pomona (CPP) and the University of North Florida (UNF). The activity formed the basis for an assignment required for class credit in a course titled Politics of the Developing Areas (Politics of Developing Countries at UNF). The authors developed and administered a pre-and postassignment survey measuring student attitudes on the causes of global poverty. Between surveys, students recorded their baseline spending habits, indicated whether or not they were able to reduce their expenses over the activity period, and wrote a reflection essay on the difficulties of limiting their expenditures, connecting their experiences to citizens living in less developed countries. The article discusses the findings across the two samples, highlighting the effectiveness of experiential learning and its appropriateness in and benefits for the classroom.

Social Science Research Network.

This paper analyzes to what degree undergraduate microeconomics textbooks incorporate the key contributions from behavioral economics and experimental economics, two branches of economics that have received increasing academic recognition in the last years.

Experimental Economics, 2006

Behavioral economics has grown significantly in importance and prevalence within the economics profession over the last couple of decades. Most economics departments now include researchers conducting behavioral research, and most economics journals regularly publish behavioral work. Behavioral economics is generally defined as using evidence and constructs from neighboring social sciences, especially about limits on computation, willpower, and self-interest, to inform economic analysis (e.g., . While many of these constructs come from psychology, other social sciences have much to contribute as well (see . For instance, anthropological research has provided important insights into the understanding of how social institutions and interactions shape strategic behavior (see . Behavioral economics can often be defined by goals and methods. Behavioral research usually seeks to develop theory that is consistent with realistic aspects of human judgment and decision making, such as bounded rationality and non-egoistic motives. As a result, most behavioral research is based on the careful comparison between theoretical predictions and the actual behavior of individuals and the outcomes observed in economic environments. Put differently, behavioral economics seeks to inform economics and economic theory by how people and economic institutions actually behave. Importantly, most behavioral economists have the goal, not of developing an alternative to economic theory and methods, but instead to incorporate new assumptions and methods into mainstream economics research. Thus, the

Engaging Science, Technology, and Society, 2020

This paper is a discussion of the role of the experimental methods and the dissemination practices of behavioral economists in capturing public imagination. The paper is framed by auto biographical accounts of two episodes in my own exploration of behavioral economics as a topic of study: participating in a MOOC on the basics of behavioral economics and sharing my work in progress to a group of staff and students in Singapore. Drawing on Shapin and Shaffer’s notion of “virtual witnesses” (Shapin and Shaffer 1985) I develop the argument that a consequence of the dissemination practices of the Heuristics and Biases Program is the creation of both “virtual subjects” and “virtual experimenters.” I then give an account of Thaler’s use of rationality and Kuhnian paradigm shifts as a rhetorical device to persuade mainstream economists and policy makers of the value of behavioral economics and to establish the narrative of behavioral economics as critics of neo-classical economics. I argue ...

2001

Since its emergence around mid-century, laboratory experimental economics has been widely recognized for introducing a new empirical research methodology rooted in the direct observation of human behavior. It is less well known that research in experimental economics has always gone hand in hand with its use as a pedagogical tool. A notable very early example is Harvard University professor E. H. Chamberlin's classroom experiments with an "imperfect market" (1948). In the mid-1950s, Vernon Smith (1962) began conducting the first double-auction market experiments in his classes at Purdue University. Over the years, it has been increasingly common to find experimental researchers investigating alternative methods for integrating simple decision-making exercises into their classrooms, based on their experience with research experiments. The objective was to create vehicles for "hands on" experiential learning and thus make economic theory more

The objective of this research is piloting and evaluating the introduction of teaching innovations for better learning in a general microeconomics course for undergraduate students. The assessment is based on the Self Determination Theory and student-centered methodologies (SDT)(Deci and Ryan, 1985; Deci et al., 1991a), which remark the individual motivation as crucial for learning. The piloting of the instrument was implemented with a sample of 323 students grouped into 14 classes, giving evidence that the most relevant course problem is that students do not feel that what they are learning is really useful in their specific professions, despite the fact that they agree with the importance to know about such topics. This piloting allowed us to validate the used instrument which implements two psychometric scales: Knowledge transfer and self-determination scales. The impact evaluation was implemented for a sample of 204 students, distributed in treated and control groups. The assignment of students to treatment is random. Results provide evidence that the intervention significantly improves the self-determined motivation as well as the academic performance of students, although in a modest magnitude.

Central European Journal of Public Policy, 2015

This paper deals with classroom experiments in economics, which have been derived from laboratory experiments. These experiments cover a broad range of topics, from strictly economic ones (like market games or auctions) to those with overlaps to other domains such as public policy. The paper discusses different methodologies of research and classroom experiments, introduces the benefits of the latter and presents a concrete teaching experiment used in public economics courses at the Faculty of Economics and Administration of Masaryk University. Another link between economic experiments and public policy is outlined here as well, namely the importance of experimental results for public policy makers.

The addition of “behavioral” to economics has given rise to a highly successful field of research. But, is it just a fashionable new trend or is it here to stay? More to the point, how does it differ from its close relative psychology? To answer these questions, the present article considers what behavioral economics is, and where it started, with the aim of trying to forecast what the status of it will be in the future. In forecasting where behavioral economics might be heading, the argument proposed here is that the best clues can be found in psychological research. If, as has been proposed here, behavioral economics partners research trends in psychology, then the futures of both will almost certainly be moving in the same direction. Both are beginning to, and will start to rely on online tools/mobile phone applications to collect richer data revealing dynamic tends over long time horizons, and as technology continues to facilitate ways of looking at group behaviour online, then larger scale studies examining interactions amongst multiple groups of people will become the norm rather than the exception. More specifically this article speculates on the future research focus of researchers in behavioral economics and the extent to which this will overlap with psychological research on judgment and decision-making.

RePEc: Research Papers in Economics, 2015

We thank Saurabh Bhargava, Brigitte Madrian, and Ted O'Donoghue for helpful suggestions and feedback. We are also grateful to Daron Acemoglu, who directly contributed, as our Economics coauthor, to many of the pedagogical approaches discussed here. † Go to http://dx.doi.org/10.1257/aer.p20151047 to visit the article page for additional materials and author disclosure statement(s).