Incorporating More Realistic Psychological Assumptions into Economics

这个项目涉及将更现实的心理学假设纳入正规经济学的努力，无论是在一般层面上，还是在特定的经济应用方面。这项研究强调了两个大致的领域。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私利，忽视了公平等社会目标。该项目涉及开发一个普遍的博弈论模型，即人们试图帮助那些帮助他们的人，伤害那些伤害他们的人。该模型考虑了在几种经济情况下的影响，并展示了消费者对公平的担忧将如何导致垄断者降低价格。第二个研究领域是理解“损失厌恶”和“天赋效应”的经济含义。这些概念总结了人类偏好看似核心特征的强有力的心理学证据：我们从消费中获得的效用在很大程度上受到我们现状的影响，我们往往更重地权衡相对于现状的损失，而不是收益。建立了纳入这类问题的基础，并寻求经济应用。正在开发的主要应用程序是消费者动态储蓄与消费决策，调查消费者是否倾向于抵制在未来收入方面的坏消息做出反应时降低消费。这项研究通过纳入公认的心理学发现，为经济模型带来了更多的现实性。它朝着建立一个有用的和描述性的理论迈出了重要的一步，以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.