Social Econ Blog

Walk around the Yard and you'll hear the campus tour guides selling people on how great the faculty is at Harvard and how you want to come here to learn from these brilliant minds. Instead, here you are learning from little ol' me.

The faculty here really are brilliant though. This article from the most recent Harvard Magazine discusses the excellent research on behavioral economics happening right here. Read it and learn:

That overwhelming majorities of people would choose to save 200 people with certainty over a one in three change of saving 600, but will choose a one in three chance of saving 600 people over 400 people dying.

That on the same day the price of Shell stock in London traded at a different price than Royal Dutch stock in Amsterdam -- even though they are the same company.

That "if you ask people, ‘Which do you want right now, fruit or chocolate?’ they say, ‘Chocolate!’ But if you ask, ‘Which one a week from now?’ they will say, ‘Fruit.’" (Probably not that big of a surprise to anyone but 1980s economists.)

That placing a photo of a women on an advertisement has the same effect as 5 percentage point reduction in the interest rate on attracting men to a bank's loan promotion.

That France hates America more than Vietnam does.

And a number of other interesting challenges to the simple, rational, economic agent.