Call For Papers
Society for the Advancement of Behavioral Economics
2003 Annual Meeting
“Behavioral Economics: The Next Step?”
July 28 – July 31
Cal-Neva Resort, Lake Tahoe, Nevada, USA
For detailed program information please link to:http://equinox.unr.edu/homepage/pingle/SABE03papers.htm
Conference Overview: Behavioral economics is an
umbrella that encompasses a wide variety of research agendas that either extend
or deviate from the traditional, neoclassical economics paradigm. By relaxing
assumptions such as perfect foresight, unchanging preferences, costless
optimization, and market equilibrium, contributions in behavioral economics
offer explanations for economic phenomena that depend upon how people behave.
Psychological and sociological issues are often pertinent, making behavioral
economics significantly interdisciplinary. Today, this behavioral perspective
is much more main stream than it used to be. Experimental economics is largely
behavioral. Labor economics now has a large behavioral component. Even
macroeconomics has not escaped the behavioral influence. Because so much of
economics can now be described as behavioral, the term behavioral economics may
not now have much meaning. Recognizing that economics has advanced to include
behavioral issues, the Society for the Advancement of Behavioral Economics
might now ask the question, “Where do we go from here?” The featured speakers
will address this organizing theme, and it is a theme around which much ongoing
behavioral research can be discussed at the conference.
Featured Speakers: The featured speakers have been chosen to give
perspectives, both micro and macro, to conference participants on where future
behavioral research might best yield significant contributions. Robert H.
Frank will focus on providing a micro perspective with his talk featured
talk entitled “Departures from Rational Choice Without Regret.” Richard
H. Day will focus on providing a macro perspective with his talk featured
talk entitled, “Behavioral Economics: Its Implications for Macroeconomic
Theory, Modeling, and Policy.”
Description of Location: The conference will be held at the Cal-Neva Resort on the North Shore of Lake Tahoe, Crystal Bay, Nevada, USA. Rand-McNally recently named Lake Tahoe the No. 1 outdoor vacation destination in the world. This glacial lake is an ever-changing kaleidoscope of colors and textures. From stunning teal to a deep, rich blue it always paints a glorious picture against the High Sierra Mountains. The Cal-Neva Resort first became well known in the 1940s and 1950s as the favorite playground for Hollywood’s brightest stars, including Frank Sinatra (who owned the resort for a time) and Marilyn Monroe. Today, the
Cal-Neva is a full service destination resort. During your free time, you will have access to a wide variety of activities, including enjoying a sandy beach, biking, boating, golfing, hiking, horseback riding, enjoying an on-site European Spa, water skiing, jet skiing, para-sailing, swimming, kayaking, gambling, shopping, and dining.
Submission Invitation: Individual papers and organized sessions including 3 or 4 papers per session are invited for 2003 Annual Meeting of the Society for the Advancement of Behavioral Economics. Proposed papers and sessions may be related any area of behavioral economics.
Submission Items and Deadlines: Abstracts of proposed papers will be evaluated for inclusion on the conference program. The abstract deadline for submission of an abstract for a proposed paper is April 30, 2003. The paper deadline for submission of the paper to be presented at the conference is June 30, 2003. Paper submissions will be sent to discussants for review prior to the conference. All those submitting papers are expected to be willing to discuss another paper in their session. You may also propose to organize a session. To do so, simply submit your session proposal, identifying the organizing theme and the potential participants. Those proposing sessions will be given prompt feedback.
Submission Format: Submit paper abstracts and proposals for sessions via email as a pdf file, an MS Word File, or a Word Perfect File.
Where to Submit: Submit abstracts and papers to pingle@unr.edu, which is the email address for Professor Mark Pingle; Department of Economics; University of Nevada; Reno, NV 89557; Phone 775-784-6634; Fax 775-784-4728.
Questions: If you have any question about the conference, please contact Professor Mark Pingle at pingle@unr.edu ; Phone 775-784-6634; Fax 775-784-4728; Department of Economics; University of Nevada; Reno, NV 89557.
Information on Featured Speakers
Robert H. Frank (Henrietta Johnson Louis Professor of
Management and
Goldwin Smith Professor of Economics, Ethics, and Public Policy at Cornell
University.) Professor Frank’s distinguished career has evolved along an
interesting path. He was a Peace Corps Volunteer in rural Nepal from 1966 to
1968, chief economist for the Civil Aeronautics Board for 1978 to 1980, and a
Fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences in
1992-1993. Professor Frank’s books include Choosing the Right Pond, Passions
Within Reason, and Microeconomics and Behavior, and Luxury Fever.
The Winner-Take-All Society, co-authored with Philip Cook, was named a
Notable Book of the Year by the New York Times, and was included in Business
Week’s list of the ten best books for 1995.
Professor Frank’s Featured Talk—A Preview: Behavioral economists have focused much effort on situations in which people depart from the predictions of standard rational choice models because they make cognitive errors. In his featured talk, “Departures from Rational Choice Without Regret,” Professor Frank will instead focus on a second reason for why people may depart from rational choice: Situations in which predictions of standard models don’t hold because people’s motives are different from the ones assumed by the models. While situations of this second sort have not received much attention, Professor Frank will discuss why they are far more important in terms of their implications for social welfare.
Richard H. Day (Professor of Economics at the University of Southern California.) In his PhD dissertation, later published as a book, Richard Day developed a class of “recursive programming” models for simulating production, investment and technological change. This work became the basis of a dynamic theory describing economic change when agents are boundedly rational, when economic behavior is adaptive, when markets work out of equilibrium and when economic structure evolves. More recently, Professor day has extenstively examined models of economic change that incorporate significant nonlinearities, culminating in volume I his book Complex Economic Dynamics in 1994 and a second volume in the year 2000. This work demonstrates irregular, random-like behavior is a generic possibility in deterministic model when nonlinearities generate significant negative feedback. Along with Sidney Winter, professor Day founded the Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization in 1980, serving as editor until just this past year.
Professor Day’s Featured Talk---A Preview. Traditional macroeconomic theory is powerfully shaped by two assumptions---costless optimization and market equilibrium. Professor Day will discuss the implications of dropping these two assumptions, considering macroeconomics in a world where rationality is bounded and markets are often, if not always, in disequilibrium. A central idea is that many of the more important economic and political institutions that we observe have evolved into their present states in response to our need to cope with market disequilibrium and imperfect decision-making. Society experiences a co-evolution of market and state as it adapts to cope with disequilibrium and bounded rationality. This non-traditional theoretical perspective, a behavioral perspective, suggests non-traditional modeling methods and non-traditional roles for public policy.