Tuesday, December 22, 2009

Behavioural Economics Lectures

One major task for break will be to find a quiet place somewhere in the country to sit down and work on my behavioural economics lectures, and to begin the process of writing them into a book. Suggestions for somewhere to go and any suggestions for the contents of the lectures welcome. I have added lectures on consumption, investment and growth.

link here (sorry, bit of a building site at present)

4 comments:

Kevin Denny said...

Liam, what part of "break" don't you understand? Have a good one!

Keith said...

The consumption stuff looks great Liam; ditto for behavioural macro.

Some suggestions:
- Maybe bump up the Kahneman and Tversky '74 paper from recommended to essential in the 3rd lecture block? Same with the Beshears paper. Are the two books a bit much for just one block? I have them and I never got around to reading through all of them last year.

- The Akerlof and Kranton paper for the Identity lecture is really good. The identity externalities game would be interesting to show people. A similar idea, with a numerical example, for Elster's indignation-envy game would go nicely with the other games you used last year.

- For the consumption block, the Harris-Laibson Econometrica paper is tough going. Maybe drop that one down to supplementary?

- I’m pretty sure the Laibson Palgrave article has a mistake on the graph at the end of the paper; the alpha and gamma values are mixed up? I think I sent you an email before, with that worked out in Excel.

- There’s a pretty good behavioural finance survey paper by Barberis and Thaler that you could link for the investment lecture. It covers: limits to no-arbitrage arguments, the equity premium puzzle, insufficient diversification, etc.

Keith said...

Speaking of Akerlof and Kranton, Amazon, being the wonderful know-er of preferences, has brought my attention to their new book out on January 4th:

Identity Economics: How Our Identities Shape Our Work, Wages, and Well-Being (Hardcover).

Liam Delaney said...

brilliant, thanks Keith. i'm writing these up at present. I will make sure to acknowledge all your input.