Matthew Rabin (Economics)
First-Year Seminar 73R | 4 Credits (Spring 2025) | CANVAS SITE
Wednesday, 9:45 AM – 11:45 AM
This seminar explores what existing research tells us about the determinants of well-being, how they relate to the choices that people make, and how researchers (especially economists) go about quantifying wants and well-being in a way that permits them to study the effects of different institutions (such as markets) on well-being. The seminar will begin with a presentation of the most basic approach within economics: Attempting to capture the notion of rational pursuit of our own well-being (or other goals people may have), economists translate the study of people into mathematical analysis by developing the notion of a utility function. But the seminar will place special emphasis on what psychology teaches us about (1) what human goals and concerns are missing from the textbook economics account of goals, and how to add them, (2) about the important biases and failures humans make in pursuing our wants. We’ll explore which psychological biases seem to matter for economic and social outcomes, and how these improvements can also be translated into the mathematical language used in economics.