The class is organized around 3 main themes:

• individual decision-making: how do people make individual decisions (for instance, how do they decide to save)

• strategic interaction: how do people interact with each other

• market outcomes: how do individual behavior and social interactions produce results for the entire society.

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Recent research across many fields emphasizes two critical aspects:

 

• The importance of incentives faced by people that, at the aggregate level, produce specific societal outcomes. This is particularly visible in the economic domain. Changing these incentives (through regulation for instance) affects behavior and market outcomes. Key to these questions are the subfields of Game Theory and Market Design.  

• The importance of irrational behavior on societal outcomes. Interestingly, there is converging evidence that behavior is driven by biology. The subtopics specialized on these issues are Behavioral Economics, Experimental Economics and since very recently Neuro-Economics.

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Audience for this course: high school students who wish to learn about Economics and the study of Human Behavior before applying to College. Undergrads and MA who want to learn about current trends in Economics.  

 

Difficulty: the resources complements AP level classes and introductory Undergraduate classes. It also offers a state-of-the art research approach. Topics are explained in the context of current knowledge and current research questions. Students should have acquired a good level in mathematics. Crash courses in mathematics, probability and statistics are available on the site.