Seminar: Behavioral Economics of Education - Details

Seminar: Behavioral Economics of Education - Details

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Economic models commonly assume that people are rational. A rational person maximizes “utility”, which can be thought of as satisfaction or happiness. The rational decision-maker is purely guided by self-interest and does not make systematic mistakes. However, in recent years there is a growing ac-ceptance by economists that the actual behavior of persons often fundamentally deviates from what a purely rational person would do – a fact that psychologists have long been aware of.

Behavioral economics integrates insights from psychology into economic contexts to explain and pre-dict human behavior. This master seminar provides a broad overview of behavioral economics and spe-cifically discusses research in the field of the economics of education. Why is this an interesting field to study? One the one hand, there is plenty of scientific evidence that better education leads to higher individual prosperity, as better educated people earn higher wages, are healthier, commit less crimes, and make better decisions for their children. On the other hand, educational investments are clearly long-term – pupils have to exert effort today to get some elusive benefit in 10 or 20 years. A 6-year-old does not go to school because she wants a better life in the future. She must be persuaded that school is fun now, or given no better option. In this sense, educational investment decisions may even be more distorted than investments made at older ages, because education is something people mainly invest in early in life, when they may be more likely to fall prey to cognitive biases.

In the seminar, students will discuss the design of field and lab experiments in more depth and write a seminar paper in which they summarize, critically assess, and potentially extend existing research. Through their participation in the seminar, students will understand which research questions are well-suited to be studied experimentally and how to conduct an experiment in economics.