Morris Altman - Behavioral Economics For Dummies

Behavioral Economics For Dummies

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Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication Data

Altman, Morris

Behavioral economics for dummies / Morris Altman.

Includes index.

Issued also in electronic formats.

ISBN 978-1-118-08503-5

1. EconomicsPsychological aspects. 2. Finance, PersonalDecision making. I. Title.

HB74.P8A58 2012 330.019 C2011-907846-5

ISBN 978-1-118-08969-9 (ebk); 978-1-118-08970-5 (ebk); 978-1-118-08971-2 (ebk)

Printed in the United States

1 2 3 4 5 RRD 15 14 13 12 11

About the Author

A former visiting scholar at Cornell, Duke, Hebrew, and Stanford universities, Morris Altman is currently professor of behavioral and institutional economics and head of the School of Economics and Finance at Victoria University of Wellington. He is also professor of economics at the University of Saskatchewan, where he was head of the Department of Economics from 1994 to 2009. Recently, Morris was elected Visiting Fellow at St. Edmunds College, Cambridge University, and was a Visiting Scholar at Stirling University in Scotland and an Erskine Fellow at the University of Canterbury, Christchurch, New Zealand.

Morris was elected and served as president of the Society for the Advancement of Behavioral Economics (SABE) from 2003 to 2006. In 2009, he was elected president of the Association for Social Economics. He is editor of the Journal of Socio-Economics (Elsevier Science) and former Associate Editor of the Journal of Economic Psychology, where he remains on the editorial board.

Morris has published over 80 refereed papers on behavioral economics, economic history, methodology, and empirical macroeconomics and four books in economic theory and public policy and has made over 150 international presentations on these subjects. He is currently completing three books on related subjects and is researching endogenous technical change, the linkages between economic justice (human rights), power, and economic growth and development, as well as the importance of altruism, ethics, and reciprocity in economic theory.

Morris is also leading major projects in experimental economics. One examines the role of prices, incomes, and social variables in determining consumer demand. Another investigates the conditions under which improved working conditions affect effort inputs and how this might impact unit costs and profitability.

He currently lives in Wellington, New Zealand, with his wife, Louise, and their daughter, Hannah.

Dedication

To my wife, Louise Lamontagne, and our daughter, Hannah Altman, for their love, inspiration, and patience.

Authors Acknowledgments

I am very grateful to Robert Hickey of John Wiley & Sons, who got me involved in this exciting project. He carefully helped me work through a detailed template for this book, which has become its backbone. I would also like to thank Elizabeth Kuball, my project editor, for keeping me on my toes throughout my tight schedule and making very helpful suggestions that have contributed to improving the rhetoric, style, and content of this book. Im sure that without Elizabeths interventions, there would be no book. Id like to thank my technical editor Nathan Berg of the University of Texas at Dallas for his many helpful comments and suggestions. Louise Lamontagne, my colleague and collaborator of over 30 years, read through the manuscript, making critical comments and suggestions that added much to this books value. Hannah Altman played a critical role, always encouraging me to tackle this difficult but exciting project and adding a few hot tips of her own.

Teaching behavioral economics over the past decade has contributed immensely to the quality of this book. It gave me the opportunity to read deeply into the literature. Difficult and sometimes seemingly simple questions from my students forced me to think through concepts in behavioral economics in much more nuanced fashion than I might otherwise have done. Also, many of students research papers in behavioral and experimental economics helped enrich my understanding of the field.