The Oxford Handbook of Behavioral Economics and the Law

2009

Research in the field of behavioral economics indicates that humans stumble in their decisionmaking in predictable ways that can often be corrected by a gentle nudge from the appropriate regulatory authority. Two new books--Dan Ariely's Predictably Irrational and Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein's Nudge--recount the findings of behavioral research on predictable patterns in human decisionmaking and lay the foundation for regulation through choice architecture that recognizes these human stumbles. In this Review Essay, we provide a critical account of remaining gaps in behavioral economics research and suggest that some types of behavioral insights may be better translated into law and policy reforms than others. We further argue that Nudge's concept of "libertarian paternalism" both understates and exaggerates the jurisprudential and policy implications of regulatory innovation. While key insights from the behavioral field may lead to effective regulation systems with minimal intervention, these systems entail costs, have distributional effects, solve macro coordination problems, and are inevitably value driven. Moreover, policy nudges serve merely as a first stage of sequenced regulation where, inevitably, more coercive measures are required in later stages. The idea of choice architecture is then related to the growing body of regulatory studies collectively termed "new governance." We conclude with a call for a more nuanced account of the range of mechanisms as well as the limits, costs, and consequences of applying lessons from the field of behavioral economics to law.

2017

Report of the Conference "Economics and/or Psychology: Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Behavioral Economics",

2012

Abstract: Behavioral economics combines economics and psychology to produce a body of evidence that individual choice behavior departs from that predicted by neoclassical economics in a number of decision-making situations.

2004

Behavioral economics increases the explanatory power of economics by providing it with more realistic psychological foundations. This book consists of representative recent articles in behavioral economics. 1 Chapter 1 is intended to provide an introduction to the approach and methods of behavioral economics, and to some of its major findings, applications, and promising new directions. It also seeks to fill some unavoidable gaps in the chapters' coverage of topics.

2016

Universidade Nova de Lisboa, its faculty, program coordinators, and the administrative sta¤ for the encouraging research environment they created that resulted in this dissertation. I would also like to thank the participants of the conferences and seminars I attended. Financial supports from Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia, Ph.D. fellowships under POCI 2010,

2020

The student author, whose presentation of the scholarship herein was approved by the program of study committee, is solely responsible for the content of this dissertation. The Graduate College will ensure this dissertation is globally accessible and will not permit alterations after a degree is conferred.

2018

The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use.

Five propositions on which economists and psychologists including behavioral economists are in agreement are presented, leading to a discussion about two kinds of rationality. After some comments on methodology and on concepts of fairness, I will discuss the question of wealth maximization versus the economics of survival, and their different implications for behavior.

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2006

Abstract Modern legal scholars frequently and increasingly base their analyses on the assumption, grounded largely in the extensive experimental literature, that individuals are subject to a number of systematic behavioral biases. Within the legal literature, behavioral economic analysis has been relied upon to generate a significant number of proposals for paternalistic regulation.

2014

As you know, Alain Samson asked us to write a foreword for his Behavioral Economics (BE) Guide, hoping to gain the perspective of two people applying the science (if I can be so presumptuous) of BE in the academic/public and private sectors. I'm sure that Alain would appreciate some colorful fireworks to illuminate his guide, so, as the representative of academia, let me begin with a challenge: I've researched many topics in my long academic career, and my latest research topic has been Rory Sutherland. Watching your many TED talks and reading your pieces in The Spectator has not only been incredibly stimulating but, I must say, a lot more entertaining than my usual academic research. Your TED talks should be required viewing for any graduate student in search of novel, important research topics. In working my way through your talks I was searching, as social scientists are prone to do, for a central, unifying theme, and it turned out to be a fairly easy task. A-the?-central theme of much of your work, and one that you allude to in every one of your presentations, is the idea that our perception of, and reaction to, reality is subjective. How you feel about products, or even about your life, is at least as important, and probably much more important, than the product or your life's objective characteristics. This is an idea I can embrace, because it's been a central theme in my own work. In research on 'coherent arbitrariness' [see also 'anchoring'] with Dan Ariely and Drazen Prelec we find that people often have little idea about how much they like, or how to value, goods and experiences. We even identify experiences which are sufficiently ambiguous that people can easily be persuaded that the same experience is either good (in which case subjects are willing to pay to experience them, and more so if they are longer) or bad (in which case subjects demand to be paid to put up with them, and more so if they are longer). In another line of research, on hedonic adaptation (much of it with Peter Ubel and reviewed in a paper with Shane Frederick), we find that people are able to adapt to a very wide range of experiences. Adaptation, again, drives a wedge between the objective characteristics of an experience and people's hedonic reactions to it. In research on 'source dependence', with Sam Issacharoff, and 'history of ownership effects', with Michel Strahilevitz, we find that how you obtain an object and how long you own it are both important determinants of value, over and above the object's objective characteristics. In diverse research on the impact of relative comparisons, my colleagues and I find support for the idea, highlighted in many of your talks, that almost all judgments are relative. And, in a series of thought pieces, I have written about the importance of meaning in people's lives and the malleability of what matters-what people value. Many of the sections of Samson's guide to behavioral economics also reflect this theme, beginning with the first, on Prospect Theory (which posits that judgments of value are relative) and its