Written by two leading psychologists, this timely publication is the only up-to-date, English-language textbook on economic psychology. Focused on application, it is an essential resource for advanced undergraduate and postgraduate courses on economic psychology, behavioural economics and social psychology, in both business and psychology departments.

A comprehensive overview of contemporary economic psychology Economic Psychology presents an accessible overview of contemporary economic psychology. The science of economic mental life and behavior is increasingly relevant as people are expected to take more responsibility for their household and personal economic decisions. The text will, in addition to reviewing current knowledge on each topic presented, consider the practical and policy implications for supporting economic decision making. Economic Psychology examines the central aspects of adult decision making in everyday life and includes the theories of economic decision making based on risk, value and affect, and theories of intertemporal choice. The text reviews the nature and behavioral consequences of economic mental representations about such things as material possessions, money and the economy. The editor Robert Ranyard—a noted expert on economic psychology—presents a life-span developmental approach, from childhood to old age. He also reviews the important societal issues such as charitable giving and economic sustainability. This vital resource: Reviews the economic psychology in everyday life including financial behaviour such as saving and tax-paying and matters such as entrepreneurial activity Offers an introduction to the field and traces the emergence of the discipline, from Adam Smith to George Katona and Herbert Simon Includes information on societal issues such as charitable giving and pro-environmental behaviour Considers broader perspectives on economic psychology: life-span psychological development from childhood to old age Written for students of psychology, Economic Psychology reviews the most important information on contemporary economic psychology with a focus on individual and household economic decision making, ranging widely across financial matters such as borrowing and saving, and economic activities such as buying, trading, and working.

The idea to publish a Handbook of Economic Psychology came up as a natural consequence of a discussion concerning appropriate reading material for courses in economic psychology. The discussion took place a few years ago in the Department of Economic Psychology at Tilburg University, The Netherlands. It was noted that there was a surprising lack of collections of pertinent readings, to say nothing about the lack of textbooks in the English language. So the present editors, who had been involved in the discussion, decided to start working on a Handbook. The situation has changed quite a lot since then. There are now a number of books, internationally available in the English language, in economic psy chology or behavioral economics. The interest in this field of study is expanding quite impressively. The Journal of Economic Psychology is now (1988) in its ninth volume and many other journals are publishing articles in the field. The application of psychological theories and methods to economic prob lems or the study of economic experiences and behavior is variously referred to as economic psychology or behavioral economics. While in principle we do not want to overdo the differences between the two, we have a feeling that economic psychology has a slightly stronger flavor of psychology than behavioral economics which in its turn seems to be closer to economics. Psychologists tend to feel more at home in economic psychology, while economists seem to favor behavioral economics.

From childhood through to adulthood, retirement and finally death, The Economic Psychology of Everyday Life uniquely explores the economic problems all individuals have to solve across the course of their lives. Webley, Burgoyne, Lea and Young begin by introducing the concept of economic behaviour and its study. They then examine the main economic issues faced at each life stage, including: * the impact of advertising on children * buying a first house and setting up home * changing family roles and gender-linked inequality * redundancy and unemployment * coping on a pension * obituaries, wills and inheritance. Finally they draw together the commonalties of economic problems across the lifespan, discuss generational and cultural changes in economic behaviour, and examine the significance of other, non-economic constraints, upon individuals. The Economic Psychology of Everyday Life provides a much-needed comprehensive and accessible guide to economic psychology which will be of great interest to researchers and students.

This book provides an overview of the concept of economic psychology from behavioral and mathematical perspectives and related theoretical and empirical findings. Economic psychology is defined briefly as a general term for descriptive theories to explain the psychological processes of microeconomic behaviors and macroeconomic phenomena. However, the psychological methodology and knowledge of economic psychology have also been applied widely in such fields as economics, business administration, and engineering, and they are expected to become increasingly useful in the future—a trend suggested in several eminent scholars’ studies. The book explains the numerous behavioral and mathematical models of economic psychology related to micro- and macroeconomic phenomena that have been proposed in the past, and introduces new models that are useful to explain human economic behaviors. It concludes with speculations about the future of modern economic psychology, referring to its connection with fields related to neuroscience, such as neuroeconomics, which have been developed in recent years. Readers require no advanced expertise; nonetheless, an introductory understanding of psychology, business administration, and economics, and a high- school-graduate level of mathematics are useful. To aid readers, each chapter includes a bibliography, which can be referred for more details related to economic psychology.

The last ten years have seen an enormous surge of interest in issues that are common to psychology and economics. How do people make decisions about economic issues? How should they make such decisions? Does public policy or regulation succeed in its aim of helping people make these decisions? What situations aid cooperation? This volume explores some of the ways in which economists and psychologists have tried to answer these questions. The authors are an international mix of economists and psychologists, and as such they demonstrate a diverse range of approaches to tackling different aspects of these issues. This is a frontier area for both psychology and economics, and consequently it is relatively free, lawless and, above all, exciting. This collection reflects the diversity and energy that characterise this rapidly growing interdisciplinary field. This book was originally published as a special issue of New Zealand Economic Papers.

This book is targeted at students of economics and business administration and presents the state of the art in behavioral economics and economic psychology and their applications to economics and business. It discusses economic psychological themes, information processing, and applications in fields including entrepreneurial behavior, perceptions of price, risk, inflation and economic activities, and economic socialization.

Economic behavior is explored from a psychological perspective by both, prominent economic psychologists with a long tradition in studying economic problems as well as economists who are open and interested in the psychological aspects of economic behavior. The contributions discuss the prospects and difficulties of this dialogue between psychology and economics and survey some important areas of research where such an interdisciplinary approach has proved to be successful. The text can also be used to introduce psychology to economists in order to give them an idea how to analyze economic problems from a psychological perspective. It also indicates many urgent and exciting research topics awaiting eager scholars to carry on the dialogue.

This 2-volume work includes approximately 1,200 entries in A-Z order, critically reviewing the literature on specific topics from abortion to world systems theory. In addition, nine major entries cover each of the major disciplines (political economy; management and business; human geography; politics; sociology; law; psychology; organizational behavior) and the history and development of the social sciences in a broader sense.

A number of books on economic psychology have appeared in the past few years. The most recent publications are by MacFadyen and Mac Fadyen (1986), Furnham and Lewis (1986), Lea et al. (1987) and Van Raaij et al. (1988). Why produce yet another book for this discipline? This question can be answered in various ways. In a sense, this book is the answer in itself. Its presentation of re search and theories is innovative in this field, at least to my knowledge. It attempts to structure the many theories emerging in the interdisci plinary science of economic psychology and to explain the background of the research. The second answer is pragmatic. In our introductory course of eco nomic psychology for economics students at Erasmus University Rot terdam we used several of the above mentioned books. Our experience with this material is that, when preparing our lectures, we had to ex plain many additional theories and experiments to our students. fur thermore, diagrams, figures and examples had to be culled from other sources or made by ourselves. It is not my intention to run down these publications since I think they provide an excellent treatment of a num ber of topics by specialists in economic psychology. The plan for the present book, however, emerged from our need to present an integrated introductory course for our students.