Incorporating More Realistic Psychological Assumptions into Economics

该项目涉及努力纳入更现实的 心理学假设进入正式经济学，无论是在一般的 特别是经济应用。 研究 强调两个一般领域。 首先，许多社会科学家批评主流经济学 过于狭隘地关注人们如何追求物质自我 利益，忽视公平等社会目标。 项目 包括建立一个通用的博弈论模型， 人们总是帮助帮助他们的人，伤害伤害他们的人 他们 该模型在几种经济情况下的含义是 考虑，并显示消费者如何关注公平性 会导致垄断者降低价格。 第二个研究领域是了解经济 “损失厌恶”和“禀赋效应”的含义。“这些 概念总结了强有力的心理学证据， 人类偏好的核心特征：我们从消费中获得的效用 很大程度上受我们现状的影响，我们倾向于权衡 相对于这种现状，损失比收益更大。 为纳入这些问题奠定了基础， 追求经济应用。 下的主要应用 发展是消费者动态储蓄对消费 决定，调查消费者是否倾向于抵制降低 他们对未来收入的坏消息的反应。 这项研究为经济模型带来了更多的现实主义， 结合了心理学的研究成果 需要很 朝着建立有用的描述性理论迈出了重要一步， 增强我们对人类行为的理解。

This project involves efforts to incorporate more realistic psychological assumptions into formal economics, both at a general level and in particular economic applications. The research emphasizes two general areas. First, many social scientists have criticized mainstream economics as too narrowly focused on how people pursue their material self- interest, ignoring social goals such as fairness. The project involves developing a general game-theoretic model of the fact that people try to help those who help them and hurt those who hurt them. The model's implications in several economic situations are considered, and it is shown how consumer concerns over fairness will lead a monopolist to lower its price. The second area of research is to understand the economic implications of "loss aversion" and the "endowment effect." These notions summarize strong psychological evidence of seemingly central features of human preferences: our utility from consumption is heavily influenced by our status quo, and we tend to weigh losses relative to this status quo more heavily than gains. Foundations are developed for incorporating such issues, and economic applications are pursued. The main application under development is consumer dynamic savings-versus-consumption decisions, investigating whether consumers tend to resist lowering their consumption in response to bad news about future income. This research brings more realism to economic models by incorporating well-established psychological findings. It takes a significant step toward building a useful and descriptive theory to enhance our understanding of human behavior.