Adam Zylbersztejn

• Maître de conférences en économie à l’Université Lyon 2
• Laboratoire GATE

This course offers an overview of the main contributions of behavioral and cognitive sciences (psychology, behavioral economics, neurosciences) to the analysis of human decision-making under risk and uncertainty. It will feature both the empirical data (coming from experiments run in the lab or in the field, but also from natural settings) and prominent theoretical models, including the academic work of several Nobel Prize winning researchers (like Daniel Kahneman and Richard Thaler).
We will first outline the classic findings on heuristics and biases in judgment and decision-making, drawn from both economics and psychology. Then, we will focus on the development and the numerous applications of prospect theory, one of the earliest and most prominent theories of decision-making under risk. Finally, we will explore the neural, cognitive, and behavioral underpinnings of human interactions under strategic uncertainty.

Textbooks :

Camerer (2003), Behavioral Game Theory, Russell Sage Foundation & Princeton University Press.
Dhami (2016), The Foundations of Behavioral Economic Analysis, Oxford University Press.

Part 1. Prospect theory : understanding decision-making under risk
I. Humans vs. econs : the standard economic model of decision-making and its empirical contradictions
II. Decision-making under risk : from the expected utility model to prospect theory
III. Applications of prospect theory

Part 2. Human interactions and strategic uncertainty
I. Intelligence : cognitive underpinnings of strategic behavior
II. Neuroeconomics : what does the brain research tell us about strategic behavior ?