About the Author

George Loewenstein, one of the founders of the field of behavioural economics and of the new field of neuroeconomics, is the Herbert A. Simon Professor of Economics and Psychology at Carnegie Mellon University. He received his PhD in economics from Yale University in 1985 and since then has held academic positions at the University of Chicago and Carnegie Mellon University, and fellowships at Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences, The Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, The Russell Sage Foundation and The Institute for Advanced Study in Berlin. His research focuses on applications of psychology to economics. Loewenstein has published more than 100 journal articles in economics, psychology, law, business and medicine as well as numerous books and book chapters. He is the former president of the Society for Judgment and Decision Making.

Product Description

One area in which Loewenstein has made a major contribution is in the analysis of how individual preferences are formed: whether they can be predicted and the extent to which they are influenced by emotion rather than reason. This volume presents a selection of his most influential papers with an introduction which provides an historical overview of the concept of preferences, summarizes his papers, and places them in the context of the literature.

Table of Contents

Introduction;

PART I GENERAL PERSPECTIVES, HISTORY, AND METHODS;

1. Because it is There: The Challenge of Mountaineering...for Utility Theory;

2. The Economics of Meaning;

3. The Fall and Rise of Psychological Explanations in the Economics of Intertemporal Choice;

4. Adam Smith, Behavioral Economist;

5. Experimental Economics from the Vantage-Point of Behavioral Economics;

6. The Psychology of Curiosity: A Review and Reinterpretation;

PART II SOCIAL PREFERENCES;

7. Social Utility and Decision Making in Interpersonal Contexts;

8. Explaining the Bargaining Impasse: The Role of Self-Serving Biases;

PART III BASIC RESEARCH ON PREFERENCES;

9. Preference Reversals Between Joint and Separate Evaluations of Options: A Review and Theoretical Analysis;

10. "Coherent Arbitrariness": Stable Demand Curves Without Staple Preferences;

PART IV PREDICTING TASTES AND FEELINGS;

11. A Bias in the Prediction of Tastes;

12. Mispredicting the Endowment Effect: Understimation of Owners' Selling Prices by Buyer's Agents;

13. Projection Bias in Predicting Future Utility;

PART V INTERTEMPORAL CHOICE;

14. Anticipation and the Valuation of Delayed Consumption;

15. Anomalies in Intertemporal Choice: Evidence and an Interpretation;

16. Preferences for Sequences of Outcomes;

17. The Red and the Black: Mental Accounting of Savings and Debt;

PART VI EMOTIONS;

18. Out of Control: Visceral Influences on Behavior;

19. Risk as Feelings;

20. Investment Behavior and the Negative Side of Emotion;

21. Heart Strings and Purse Strings: Carryover Effects of Emotions on Economic Decisions;

22. Separate Neural Systems Value Immediate and Delayed Monetary Rewards