Last Week's Reading Group

We discussed Dan Ariely’s new book.

http://web.mit.edu/ariely/www/MIT/papers.shtml

We talked a lot about the economic activity of children. Development of preferences in particular how children develop ideas of exchange, form risk and time preferences and rates of social altruism. Talked about transmission from parents and society through language. Talked also about link to traditional theories in child psychology.

Mischel had conducted a number of early studies of delay of gratification in children. His url is below:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walter_Mischel

http://www.columbia.edu/cu/psychology/indiv_pages/mischel.html

Also, we went over a number of experiments in economics that can be used as evidence that the simple model of upward sloping labour supply hides a lot of motivational factors underlying effort.

In particular we examined:

Ariely’s papers on meaning:

http://web.mit.edu/ariely/www/MIT/papers.shtml

Fehr’s papers on cost of control and "hidden" aspects of incentives

http://ftp.iza.org/dp1203.pdf

The Hidden Costs and Rewards of Incentives (623.7KB, ) Journal of the European Economic Association.