Do the choices we make as consumers serve our economic interests? Do they even reflect our real preferences? Three Yale scholars discuss research — their own and others' — that sheds light on these questions.
Decades of economic research have assumed people pursue their goals in a rational manner, discounting the effects of emotion, bias, error, and other irrational forces. Robert Shiller argues that economists need to take a closer look at how people make decisions.
A host of studies and academic theories that apply psychological insights to economic behavior have been grouped under the label "behavioral." Is this growing field changing how the economy is studied — and how it functions?
Like consumers of other goods and services, healthcare consumers don’t always make decisions that are in their own best interests. Four experts — a psychologist, an organizational behaviorist, a behavioral economist, and a clinician — discuss the challenges of helping people make healthy choices.
Could the market do more to improve ethical performance than professionalization? Professor Jim Baron proposes that voluntary certification of various facets of corporate responsibility could create a market for good behavior.