Behavioral
Lower-Income Employees Are More Likely to Remain at 401(k) Defaults, Even If It Costs Them Money
Automatically enrolling employees in retirement plans is a powerful tool for increasing savings. But Yale SOM’s James Choi and his coauthors find that once enrolled, people with lower incomes are more likely to remain at default contribution rates, even if they aren’t optimal.
Does money change your thinking?
You encounter it every day. You might count it or spend it or wish you had more of it. But can just thinking about money affect your behavior?
Are we good at making choices?
Do the choices we make as consumers serve our economic interests? Do they even reflect our real preferences? Three Yale scholars discuss research — their own and others' — that sheds light on these questions.
Can behavioral economics improve law?
Economics has long been used to evaluate the law. But what happens when economics gets things wrong? Law professor Christine Jolls describes the role behavioral economics can play.
What are you thinking?
Decades of economic research have assumed people pursue their goals in a rational manner, discounting the effects of emotion, bias, error, and other irrational forces. Robert Shiller argues that economists need to take a closer look at how people make decisions.
What is behavioral?
A host of studies and academic theories that apply psychological insights to economic behavior have been grouped under the label "behavioral." Is this growing field changing how the economy is studied — and how it functions?
How do healthcare consumers make decisions?
Like consumers of other goods and services, healthcare consumers don’t always make decisions that are in their own best interests. Four experts — a psychologist, an organizational behaviorist, a behavioral economist, and a clinician — discuss the challenges of helping people make healthy choices.
A company in good standing?
Could the market do more to improve ethical performance than professionalization? Professor Jim Baron proposes that voluntary certification of various facets of corporate responsibility could create a market for good behavior.