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Publications (19)
Working Paper
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– A New Approach to Development Policy
Successful development programs rely on people to behave and choose in certain ways, and behavioral economics helps us understand why people behave and choose as they do. Approaching problems in development using behavioral economics thus leads to better diagnosis and to better-designed solutions...
Blog
23 April 2014 Jukka Pirttilä In conventional economic theory, agents are assumed to be able to make rational choices, unaffected by emotions and not constrained by decision-making errors. This theory works well in some situations, but in the last two decades, it has become increasingly clear that...
Working Paper
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– A Research Review and Agenda
The poor can and do save, but often use formal or informal instruments that have high risk, high cost, and limited functionality. This could lead to undersaving compared to a world without market or behavioural frictions. Undersaving can have important welfare consequences: variable consumption, low...
Journal Article
This peer-reviewed research is available free of charge. UNU-WIDER believes that research is a global public good and supports Open Access.
– A Research Review and Agenda
Part of Journal Special Issue
Poverty, Development, and Behavioral Economics
Journal Article
This peer-reviewed research is available free of charge. UNU-WIDER believes that research is a global public good and supports Open Access.
Part of Journal Special Issue
Poverty, Development, and Behavioral Economics
Journal Article
This peer-reviewed research is available free of charge. UNU-WIDER believes that research is a global public good and supports Open Access.
– A New Approach to Development Policy
Part of Journal Special Issue
Poverty, Development, and Behavioral Economics
Journal Article
This peer-reviewed research is available free of charge. UNU-WIDER believes that research is a global public good and supports Open Access.
– Contrasting Rational Choice and Behavioral Perspectives
Part of Journal Special Issue
Poverty, Development, and Behavioral Economics
Journal Article
This peer-reviewed research is available free of charge. UNU-WIDER believes that research is a global public good and supports Open Access.
Part of Journal Special Issue
Poverty, Development, and Behavioral Economics
Journal Article
This peer-reviewed research is available free of charge. UNU-WIDER believes that research is a global public good and supports Open Access.
Part of Journal Special Issue
Poverty, Development, and Behavioral Economics
This Special Issue brings together papers from UNU-WIDER Conference on Poverty and Behavioural Economics that were accepted after the peer review process of the journal. The eight papers in this Special Issue all share the objective of exploring the consequences for the analysis of poverty and...
Working Paper
pdf
In this paper we argue that the recent evidence on individuals’ decision making is of high relevance for the measurement of poverty when switching from a static and certain to a dynamic and uncertain framework. The numerous proposed measures of multi-period poverty and vulnerability have until now...
Working Paper
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This paper examines the measurement of social welfare, poverty and inequality taking into account features that have been found to be important welfare determinants in behavioural economics. Most notably, we incorporate reference-dependence, loss aversion and diminishing sensitivity—aspects...
Working Paper
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– Relative Status, Ceremonies and Early Child Development in China
Presenting gifts at funerals, weddings, and other ceremonies held by fellow villagers have been regarded as social norms in Chinese villages for thousands of years. However, it is more burdensome for the poor to take part in these social occasions than for the rich. Because the poor often lack the...
Working Paper
pdf
– An Agent-Based Simulation
Behavioural economics highlights the role of social preferences in economic decisions. Further, populations are heterogeneous; suggesting that group composition may impact the ability to sustain voluntary public goods contributions. This parallels research in public economics where fractionalization...
Working Paper
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In the presence of inequality a status-driven utility function reconciles the conflict between income-based and nutrition-based measures of poverty. Moreover, it can explain why the poor tend to save less, an established empirical fact in the developing countries. The result is independent of the...
Working Paper
pdf
India addressed the requirement for pro-poor service delivery in rural regions by introducing decentralization and affirmative action policies. In order to measure the social preferences of local decision makers, we conducted field experiments which simulated the selection of needy beneficiaries for...
Displaying 16 of 19 results