Behavioral Economics for Business

University:
George Mason University (US)

2015

This course provides an overview of organizational behavior and human decision making from a behavioral economics perspective, which is an emerging subfield that integrates insights from psychology into economic models of behavior. Students will discuss ways in which individuals in business organizations systematically depart from assumptions such as perfect rationality and self-interest. The course will lead students to question many assumptions of the standard models. A goal of this course is to point towards ways one might modify standard models of organizational behavior, so as to increase their psychological realism and thus improve their predictive power.

Prerequisites: This course is self-contained and students are not required to take previous courses. In general, a student should be able to read comfortably the suggested books.

Schedule:

June 1 – June 12, 2015
June 1 – June 12 (6:00 p.m. – 9:00 p.m.)
June 6 (9:00 a.m. – 12:00 p.m.)

About Professor Daniel Houser

Daniel Houser is Professor and Chairman of the Department of Economics, as well as Director of the Interdisciplinary Center for Economic Science at George Mason University. He holds a PhD in Economics from the University of Minnesota (1998). He has published more than 60 publi- cations in Journals such as: Journal of Public Economics, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences and Journal of Risk and Uncertainty. He is also editor of several Journals including: Management Academy of Sciences and Econometrica. His main teaching interest lay in the fields of experimental theory and methods, behavioral/neuro economics, and political economy.