Author: | Stephen J. Turnbull |
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Organization: | Faculty of Engineering, Information, and Systems at the University of Tsukuba |
Contact: | Stephen J. Turnbull <turnbull@sk.tsukuba.ac.jp> |
Date: | September 24, 2021 |
Copyright: | 2021, Stephen J. Turnbull |
Topic: | society |
I received an email from a student who would like to study and research behavioral economics, but is having trouble choosing a topic. However, it is not hard to find potential topics in this email because several concrete ideas are present. Of course, the student may not like them, but it's enough to start discussion. Not all students with trouble choosing follow this pattern, but many do.
Students with less concrete ideas should try to find some to present to me for advice. Don't limit yourself to research papers, although papers you read for class or for background and found interesting are often useful. Newspaper and magazine articles or even TV news and programs are also good sources for "startup" ideas. If you have a question
From the student:
I have been searching for papers related to behavioral economics these weeks. The range of the topic is wide. Many papers referred "nudge" that aims the welfare economics and mainly discuss about policy settings that can be applied to improve national life quality and sense of happiness. However, these papers consider more sociology or philosophy than engineering and mathematic, which means these contents may not be proper enough for the shako style.
For students who don't know much about behavioral economics, I'll start with some definitions.
From the student:
Another type of papers mainly discusses the improved or optimized models based on traditional economics, such as prospect theory. These papers also apply the model in different fields. For example, Prof. Sawa Ryoji combines stochastic stability analysis with behavioral economics in his paper "A prospect theory Nash bargaining solution and its stochastic stability". [1]
The student comments that most papers seem "sociological" or "philosophical", and perhaps not acceptable in Shako.
From the student:
Sometimes I realize the data is hard to be collected or even cannot be collected. Or there is almost no research to do because the theme looks more like an inquiry of the market.
From the student:
I have more rough thoughts than detailed information.
That's not a problem, as long as you give me some detailed information, and your details are not all negative. It's my role to identify and help sharpen detailed ideas out of rough thoughts.
Bottom line: don't worry about math unless you want to do math. There's almost always a way to do without "hard" math.
[1] | Sawa, Ryoji [2021] "A prospect theory Nash bargaining solution and its stochastic stability," Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization. |
[2] | Ma, Ching-To, John Moore, and Stephen J. Turnbull [1988] "Stopping Agents from 'Cheating'," Journal of Economic Theory 46:2, December, pp. 355-72. |
[3] | Turnbull, Stephen J. [1983] "Choosing Duopoly Solutions by Consistent Conjectures and by Uncertainty," Economics Letters 13, pp. 253-8. |
[4] | Turnbull, Stephen J. [1994] "Organizations as Teams of Automata," Games and Economic Behavior 7, June, pp. 116-138. |