Behavioural economics looks at the way in which people behave when making economic decisions about spending. It looks essentially and what people buy and why they buy it. Research in behavioural economics has started to question some of the traditional economic assumptions of rationality and argues that habits and other psychological factors may be more important than conventionally assumed.
Why we buy what we buy Guardian (20/5/08)
Questions
| 1. | Explain what is meant by ‘behavioural economics’. |
| 2. | Evaluate the principal factors that people take into account when choosing to buy a consumer good. |
| 3. | “….. average people are all far more irrational and more human than economists allow”. Discuss the extent to which this might be true. |