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Behavioral Economics Commons

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Full-Text Articles in Behavioral Economics

Rationality And Humanity: A View From Feminist Economics, Julie A. Nelson Sep 2009

Rationality And Humanity: A View From Feminist Economics, Julie A. Nelson

Julie A. Nelson

DOES RATIONAL CHOICE THEORY (RCT) HAVE SOMETHING IMPORTANT to contribute to the humanities? Usually the arguments for answering “yes” to this question go something like the following: The application of RCT has proved to be a powerful tool in economics and the social sciences, leading to clear and rigorous insights unattainable from less precise methods. Therefore, by also harnessing this power, the disciplines in the humanities could advance toward becoming more elegant, rational, and forceful in their explorations of human behavior. As an economist, I’d like to address this argument on its home ground. Has the use of RCT advanced …


On Some Covariance Inequalities For Monotonic And Non-Monotonic Functions, Martin Egozcue, Luis Fuentes García, Wing Keung Wong Sep 2009

On Some Covariance Inequalities For Monotonic And Non-Monotonic Functions, Martin Egozcue, Luis Fuentes García, Wing Keung Wong

Martin Egozcue

No abstract provided.


Teaching Ecological And Feminist Economics In The Principles Course, Julie A. Nelson Jun 2009

Teaching Ecological And Feminist Economics In The Principles Course, Julie A. Nelson

Julie A. Nelson

It can be difficult to incorporate ecological and feminist concerns into introductory courses, when one is also obliged to teach neoclassical analysis. In this essay we briefly describe how one might extend existing “multi-paradigmatic” approaches to feminist and ecological concerns, and then present an new alternative approach that may be more suitable for some students. This “broader questions and bigger toolbox” approach can be applied in both microeconomics and macroeconomics introductory classrooms.


If The Large Wta-Wtp Gap For Public Goods Is Real (And There Are Good Reasons To Think So) Conventional Welfare Measures Are Simply Incorrect, Philip E. Graves Jan 2009

If The Large Wta-Wtp Gap For Public Goods Is Real (And There Are Good Reasons To Think So) Conventional Welfare Measures Are Simply Incorrect, Philip E. Graves

PHILIP E GRAVES

A robust finding in economics is that decision-makers often exhibit a much smaller dollar willingness to pay (WTP) for an item than the minimum amount that they claim to be willing to accept (WTA) to part with it. The spread between these two numbers is particularly large for public goods, raising serious public policy concerns regarding which number, if either, is appropriate for valuing such goods. A traditional utility maximizing model is presented here that predicts–as both measures are currently calculated–that WTA will exceed WTP, quite plausibly by a substantial amount for public goods. Moreover, it is shown here that …