Colin Camerer | |
---|---|
Born | December 4, 1959 |
Nationality | American |
Academic career | |
Institution | California Institute of Technology |
Field | Behavioral economics |
Alma mater | University of Chicago Johns Hopkins University |
Information at IDEAS / RePEc |
Colin Farrell Camerer (born December 4, 1959) is an American behavioral economist, and Robert Kirby Professor of Behavioral Finance and Economics at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech).
A former child prodigy, Camerer received a B.A. in quantitative studies from Johns Hopkins University in 1977 (at age 17), followed by an M.B.A. in finance from the University of Chicago in 1979 and a Ph.D. in behavioral decision theory from that same institution in 1981 (at age 21) for thesis titled The Validity and Utility of Expert Judgment under the supervision of Hillel Einhorn and Robin Hogarth. [1] [2] Camerer worked at Kellogg, Wharton, and the University of Chicago Booth School of Business before moving to Caltech in 1994.
Camerer's research is on the interface between cognitive psychology and economics. This work seeks a better understanding of the psychological and neurobiological basis of decision-making in order to determine the validity of models of human economic behavior. His research uses mostly economics experiments—and occasionally field studies—to understand how people behave when making decisions (e.g., risky gambles for money), in games, and in markets (e.g., speculative price bubbles).
He spoke at the Econometric Society World Congress in London on August 20, 2005 and at the Nobel Centennial Symposium in 2001 on Behavioral and Experimental Economics.
He is the author of "Behavioral Game Theory" published by Princeton University Press in 2003.
During the late 1990s and until mid-2008, Camerer began instructing college courses in fields such as Cognitive Psychology, Microeconomic Theory, Behavioral Economics, and Organizational Design. These courses were held at a variety of different universities, including the aforementioned California Institute of Technology and additionally New York University. [3]
In September 2013, Camerer was named a MacArthur fellow. [4]
In 1983, Camerer started a record label called "Fever Records" as "an economics experiment". Bands that he signed to the label include the Dead Milkmen, Big Black and Get Smart!. [5] The label was part of the Enigma Records group of labels. [6]
Another Fever Records was founded in the 1980s in New York City to distribute rap records, and has no connection.
Herbert Alexander Simon was an American political scientist whose work also influenced the fields of computer science, economics, and cognitive psychology. His primary research interest was decision-making within organizations and he is best known for the theories of "bounded rationality" and "satisficing". He received the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences in 1978 and the Turing Award in computer science in 1975. His research was noted for its interdisciplinary nature and spanned across the fields of cognitive science, computer science, public administration, management, and political science. He was at Carnegie Mellon University for most of his career, from 1949 to 2001, where he helped found the Carnegie Mellon School of Computer Science, one of the first such departments in the world.
A cognitive bias is a systematic pattern of deviation from norm or rationality in judgment. Individuals create their own "subjective reality" from their perception of the input. An individual's construction of reality, not the objective input, may dictate their behavior in the world. Thus, cognitive biases may sometimes lead to perceptual distortion, inaccurate judgment, illogical interpretation, and irrationality.
A heuristic, or heuristic technique, is any approach to problem solving or self-discovery that employs a practical method that is not guaranteed to be optimal, perfect, or rational, but is nevertheless sufficient for reaching an immediate, short-term goal or approximation. Where finding an optimal solution is impossible or impractical, heuristic methods can be used to speed up the process of finding a satisfactory solution. Heuristics can be mental shortcuts that ease the cognitive load of making a decision.
Bounded rationality is the idea that rationality is limited when individuals make decisions, and under these limitations, rational individuals will select a decision that is satisfactory rather than optimal.
Daniel Kahneman is an Israeli-American author, psychologist and economist notable for his work on hedonic psychology, psychology of judgment and decision-making. He is also known for his work in behavioral economics, for which he was awarded the 2002 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences. His empirical findings challenge the assumption of human rationality prevailing in modern economic theory.
Behavioral economics is the study of the psychological, cognitive, emotional, cultural and social factors involved in the decisions of individuals or institutions, and how these decisions deviate from those implied by classical economic theory.
Decision theory is a branch of applied probability theory and analytic philosophy concerned with the theory of making decisions based on assigning probabilities to various factors and assigning numerical consequences to the outcome.
Neuroeconomics is an interdisciplinary field that seeks to explain human decision-making, the ability to process multiple alternatives and to follow through on a plan of action. It studies how economic behavior can shape our understanding of the brain, and how neuroscientific discoveries can guide models of economics.
Experimental economics is the application of experimental methods to study economic questions. Data collected in experiments are used to estimate effect size, test the validity of economic theories, and illuminate market mechanisms. Economic experiments usually use cash to motivate subjects, in order to mimic real-world incentives. Experiments are used to help understand how and why markets and other exchange systems function as they do. Experimental economics have also expanded to understand institutions and the law.
The expected utility hypothesis is a foundational assumption in mathematical economics concerning decision making under uncertainty. It postulates that rational agents maximize utility, meaning the subjective desirability of their actions. Rational choice theory, a cornerstone of microeconomics, builds this postulate to model aggregate social behaviour.
The bias blind spot is the cognitive bias of recognizing the impact of biases on the judgment of others, while failing to see the impact of biases on one's own judgment. The term was created by Emily Pronin, a social psychologist from Princeton University's Department of Psychology, with colleagues Daniel Lin and Lee Ross. The bias blind spot is named after the visual blind spot. Most people appear to exhibit the bias blind spot. In a sample of more than 600 residents of the United States, more than 85% believed they were less biased than the average American. Only one participant believed that they were more biased than the average American. People do vary with regard to the extent to which they exhibit the bias blind spot. This phenomenon has been successfully replicated and it appears that in general, stronger personal free will beliefs are associated with bias blind spot. It appears to be a stable individual difference that is measurable.
The dictator game is a popular experimental instrument in social psychology and economics, a derivative of the ultimatum game. The term "game" is a misnomer because it captures a decision by a single player: to send money to another or not. Thus, the dictator has the most power and holds the preferred position in this “game.” Although the “dictator” has the most power and presents a take it or leave it offer, the game has mixed results based on different behavioral attributes. The results – where most "dictators" choose to send money – evidence the role of fairness and norms in economic behavior, and undermine the assumption of narrow self-interest when given the opportunity to maximise one's own profits.
Samuel Stebbins Bowles, is an American economist and Professor Emeritus at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, where he continues to teach courses on microeconomics and the theory of institutions. His work belongs to the neo-Marxian tradition of economic thought. However, his perspective on economics is eclectic and draws on various schools of thought, including what he and others refer to as post-Walrasian economics.
Experimetrics comprises the body of econometric techniques that are customized to experimental applications.
Teck-Hua Ho is the fifth president of the Nanyang Technological University, Singapore (NTU). He is also a Distinguished University Professor at NTU Singapore. Prior to joining NTU, he was the senior deputy president and provost at the National University of Singapore (NUS), and the William Halford Jr. Family Professor of Marketing at the Haas School of Business. He is also the founding executive chairman of AI Singapore, a national research and development programme.
Joseph Henrich is an American professor of human evolutionary biology at Harvard University. Before arriving at Harvard, Henrich was a professor of psychology and economics at the University of British Columbia. He is interested in the question of how humans evolved from "being a relatively unremarkable primate a few million years ago to the most successful species on the globe", and how culture shaped our species' genetic evolution.
Social emotions are emotions that depend upon the thoughts, feelings or actions of other people, "as experienced, recalled, anticipated or imagined at first hand". Examples are embarrassment, guilt, shame, jealousy, envy, elevation, empathy, and pride. In contrast, basic emotions such as happiness and sadness only require the awareness of one's own physical state. Therefore, the development of social emotions is tightly linked with the development of social cognition, the ability to imagine other people's mental states, which generally develops in adolescence. Studies have found that children as young as 2 to 3 years of age can express emotions resembling guilt and remorse. However, while five-year-old children are able to imagine situations in which basic emotions would be felt, the ability to describe situations in which social emotions might be experienced does not appear until seven years of age.
Cognitive bias mitigation is the prevention and reduction of the negative effects of cognitive biases – unconscious, automatic influences on human judgment and decision making that reliably produce reasoning errors.
Behavioral game theory seeks to examine how people's strategic decision-making behavior is shaped by social preferences, social utility and other psychological factors. Behavioral game theory analyzes interactive strategic decisions and behavior using the methods of game theory, experimental economics, and experimental psychology. Experiments include testing deviations from typical simplifications of economic theory such as the independence axiom and neglect of altruism, fairness, and framing effects. As a research program, the subject is a development of the last three decades.
Ido Erev holds a PhD from the University of North Carolina, 1990 in Cognitive/Quantitative Psychology.
He started a record label, Fever Records, as an economics experiment. Unless you were part of the punk scene in Chicago at the time, or are a music historian, you probably haven't heard of the Bonemen of Baruma, Big Black, or the Dead Milkmen, but you can take my word that they were exciting and important local bands of the period.