Edward Elgar Publishing Decisions, Preferences, and Heuristics: An Introduction to Economic Psychology and Behavioral Economics

This enlightening book comprehensively maps the current state of economic psychology and behavioural economics. Exploring key concepts, topics and models in the field, it is also a launching pad for future research, providing useful insights on how to make good personal and professional decisions, advancing microeconomic discourse. The book lays out how economic decisions are made by answering key questions in the bordering field between economics and psychology. Close to the ecological rationality research program, it presents the main factors that determine economic choices, before exploring the most common algorithms used to concretize economic decisions and the main strategies for altering preferences. Chapters focus on the general issues surrounding economic choices, such as preferences, beliefs, emotions, and restrictions, and on the heuristic algorithms, including outstanding social ones, applied by people in decision-making processes. Drawing these elements together, the author presents a seminal model combining preferences and heuristics to explain choices in the consumption of goods and services. This book will be an invaluable resource for academic and professional economists seeking to deepen their understanding of the psychological dimension of economic decisions. It will also be a useful guide for students of economics, management and the wider social sciences curious about decision-making procedures.