Behavioral Game Theory

I have finally got around to reading Daniel Kahneman's book Thinking Fast and Slow . It is a fantastic read. It brilliantly sets out how Kahneman and Tversky revolutionized the way we think about human judgement and decision making. But, here's the question I was left asking myself - why has the work of Kahneman and Tversky had so little impact in economics? That question might sound bizarre given that Kahneman won the Nobel Prize for Economics (Tversky had died). As far as I can see, however, the insights provided by Kahneman and Tversky have largely been ignored. So, what's gone wrong?         In his book Kahneman points to prospect theory as one idea economists have endorsed. True enough, their paper on prospect theory is one of the most cited papers in economics. Cites, however, are different to real impact. And very, very little research in economics has properly applied prospect theory. Indeed, given that the original paper is a pretty tough read, I would be surpr

It is the weekend of the British Open Golf Championship. And yesterday there was a fair amount of discussion about slow play. Slow play is annoying in golf because one player taking their time holds up everybody else on the course. The referees have the power to counteract this by putting a player on the clock. Which basically means the player will be timed and penalized for taking too long. Yesterday, the referees put lots of players on the clock and penalized Japanese golfer Hideki Matsuyama. A similar thing happened at this years Masters Championship where 14 year old Chinese Golfer Guan Tianlang was penalized .       What interested me about the slow play discussion was the reaction of the players and commentators. All were in agreement that play had been to slow and that 'something needs to be done about it'. But mention a name, such as Matsuyama, and all were also in agreement that 'he was treated very harshly'. That sounds contradictory. There were only 40 or

We have just got back from the PET13 conference in Lisbon. On the day of our arrival in Lisbon we were tired and hungry and desperately seeking food. A stroll in the vicinity of the hotel finally revealed a local corner shop selling fruit and essentials, and we were saved. We were also pleasantly surprised by the price. Our expectation was to pay a lot, because we'd bought a lot and because the shop owner was presumably going to rip off the unknowing tourist. It was pleasant surprise, therefore, when the bill came in well below our expectations.        In all likelihood the shop owner did add a bit of 'unknowing tourist profit' to the price. But who cares? We, as customers, were very happy to pay the price we did. And the shop owner was presumably happy to charge the price he did. Everyone is a winner. Indeed, this is a textbook story of exchange - a buyer and seller exchange goods for mutual benefit. From a textbook point of view, the really curious thing about this exc