Crash Course in Behavioral Economics

This course focuses on essentials of standard behavioral economics. You will learn about its methodology, and basic models, or about values, preferences, and choices.

This intensive introductory course aims to provide a comprehensive overview of basic concepts and models in standard behavioral economics. Students will learn about methodological foundations of behavioral economics and meet the most prominent scholars of the field. They will gain an understanding of the differences between rational choice and behavioral models, both under certainty and risk. Lecture on Intertemporal choice will tap into how preferences might change over time and how to avoid procrastination or resist temptation. Students will also learn how social preferences modify the predictions of conventional game-theoretic analysis. Mental accounting deals with a question how people think about value and money, and why – for example – paying online hurts less or why we like three smaller gifts better than one big. The last topic will cover a topic of learning, which is a key element of our interaction with environment we live in.

ECTS

Level

Crash Course

Site

Online

When to attend

CEBEX Summer School on Behavioral Sciences 2021

Aug 6, 2021 – Aug 7, 2021

CEBEX Winter School on Behavioral Economics 2021

Dec 4, 2021 – Dec 5, 2021

Lecturers

Vojtěch Zíka

CEBEX

Czech Republic

Marek Hudík

University of Economics, Prague

Czech Republic

Course details

Topics covered

- Brief History and Methodology of Behavioral Economics

- Values, Preferences and Choices

- Heuristics and Biases

- Intertemporal Choice

- Decision-making under Risk and Uncertainty

- Behavioral Game Theory

- Mental Accounting

Schedule

Each lecture lasts 60 minutes. Morning lectures start at 8:30 and finish at 12:30. Afternoon lectures start at 13:30 and finish at 17:30. If not set otherwise, the break after each lecture lasts 30 minutes. All times are in Central European Time (CET).

ECTS requirements

To obtain the ECTS, a student has to get in total at least 60% of all available points which are being awarded for the following activities:

- attend all lectures (12 hrs. of WL / 2 pts. per hour, 24 in total)

- submit 2 homeworks (4 hrs. of WL / 8 pts. per homework, 16 in total)
- final exam (30 hrs. of WL / 60 pts)

Literature

- Wilkinson, N., & Klaes, M. (2017). An introduction to behavioral economics. Macmillan International Higher Education.