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on Neuroeconomics |
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Issue of 2012‒04‒23
three papers chosen by |
| By: | Becker, Anke (University of Bonn); Deckers, Thomas (University of Bonn); Dohmen, Thomas (ROA, Maastricht University); Falk, Armin (University of Bonn); Kosse, Fabian (University of Bonn) |
| Abstract: | Although both economists and psychologists seek to identify determinants of heterogeneity in behavior, they use different concepts to capture them. In this review we first analyze the extent to which economic preferences and psychological concepts of personality – such as the Big Five and locus of control – are related. We analyze data from incentivized laboratory experiments and representative samples and find only low degrees of association between economic preferences and personality. We then regress life outcomes – such as labor market success, health status and life satisfaction – simultaneously on preference and personality measures. The analysis reveals that the two concepts are rather complementary when it comes to explaining heterogeneity in important life outcomes and behavior. |
| Keywords: | risk preference, time preference, social preferences, locus of control, Big Five |
| JEL: | C91 D01 D80 D90 I00 J30 J62 |
| Date: | 2012–04 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp6470&r=neu |
| By: | Jerome Adda; Anders Bjorklund; Helena Holmlund |
| Abstract: | This paper evaluates the long-term consequences of parental death on children’s cognitive and noncognitive skills, as well as on labor market outcomes. We exploit a large administrative data set covering many Swedish cohorts. We develop new estimation methods to tackle the potential endogeneity of death at an early age, based on the idea that the amount of endogeneity is constant or decreasing during childhood. Our method also allows us to identify a set of death causes that are conditionally exogenous. We find that the loss of either a father or a mother on boys’ earnings is no higher than 6-7 percent and slightly lower for girls. Our examination of the impact on cognitive skills (IQ and educational attainment) and on noncognitive skills (emotional stability, social skills) shows rather small effects on each type of skill. We find that both mothers and fathers are important, but mothers are somewhat more important for cognitive skills and fathers for noncognitive ones. |
| Keywords: | family background, cognitive and noncognitive skills, parental death |
| JEL: | J12 J17 J24 |
| Date: | 2011 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:eui:euiwps:eco2011/08&r=neu |
| By: | Dietrich, Franz; List, Christian |
| Abstract: | Behaviourism is the view that preferences, beliefs, and other mental states in social-scienti c theories are auxiliary constructs re-describing people's behav- ioural dispositions. Mentalism is the view that they capture real phenomena, no less existent than the unobservable entities and properties in the natural sciences, such as electrons and electromagnetic elds. While behaviourism has long gone out of fashion in psychology and linguistics, it remains the dominant orthodoxy in economics, especially in the form of revealed preferencetheory. We aim to (i) clear up some common conceptual confusions about the two views in economics, (ii) situate the debate in a broader historical and philosophical context, and (iii) defend a mentalist approach to economics. Setting aside normative concerns about behaviourism, we show that mentalism is in line with best scienti c practice even if economics is treated as a purely positive science of human social behaviour. We distinguish mentalism from, and reject, the radical neuroeconomic view that social behaviour should be explained in terms of people's brain processes, as distinct from their mental states. |
| Keywords: | behaviourism; mentalism; realism; economic models; preferences; beliefs; rationalization; philosophy of science; neuroeconomics |
| JEL: | B0 C0 A11 D03 D0 N0 A12 D01 A14 B41 |
| Date: | 2012–04–01 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pra:mprapa:37813&r=neu |