“心理账户”是人们在心理上对结果（尤其是经济结果）的编码、分类和估价的过程,它揭示了人们在进行（资金）财富决策时的心理认知过程。心理账户的理论成果主要集中在“非替代性”的本质特征以及特殊的心理运算规则,心理账户在各个应用领域的研究成果主要包括：价格感知;行为资产组合理论;行为生命周期理论以及消费预算的研究。未来将在多元化研究方法的基础上,开展跨文化研究,对心理账户的内在心理机制和认知规律深入探讨。

理查德·塞勒因其对行为经济学的贡献而被授予2017年度诺贝尔经济学奖。本文对塞勒在经济学和心理学整合及行为经济学理论的拓展与应用方面的主要贡献做了较为系统的述评。首先,在简要概述塞勒的学术生涯及主要论著后,着重阐明塞勒在行为经济学由学术异端到主流经济学分支演变过程中所扮演的角色;其次,在概述有限理性、有限意志力和有限自利三个行为经济学基本要素的基础上,着重阐述塞勒对禀赋效应与心理账户、时间偏好的动态不一致性与自我控制、公平与社会偏好理论及应用方面的主要研究;再次,阐述塞勒在应对传统金融学质疑中对夯实有限理性和有限套利这两个行为金融学基石所做的主要贡献;最后,简要评析塞勒的理论研究特点及其理论的应用借鉴意义。

经济心理学旨在探讨经济行为产生的心理机制以及经济事件的心理效应,它是心理学的重要分支,是经济学和心理学的交叉学科。该学科产生自20世纪初,但此后的半个世纪里发展缓慢;20世纪中期经济心理学在美国重新兴起,此后在欧美国家获得了长足的发展。目前,决策和博弈的心理研究构成了经济心理学的基础领域,金融、消费、幸福等方面的心理研究构成该学科的应用领域,而神经经济心理学与进化经济心理学则采用了新兴的研究技术和思路探讨传统问题。总体而言,与经济学不同,经济心理学有着强烈的现实主义旨趣,侧重以实验方法研究真实的经济行为。深入反思经济心理学的学科历史和现状,理解其方法论特征,有助于找准我国经济心理学学科建设及学术研究的方向和进路。

The equity premium puzzle refers to the empirical fact that stocks have outperformed bonds over the last century by a surprisingly large margin. We offer a new explanation based on two behavioral concepts. First, investors are assumed to be "loss averse," meaning that they are distinctly more sensitive to losses than to gains. Second, even long-term investors are assumed to evaluate their portfolios frequently. We dub this combination "myopic loss aversion." Using simulations, we find that the size of the equity premium is consistent with the previously estimated parameters of prospect theory if investors evaluate their portfolios annually.

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Research in experimental psychology suggests that, in violation of Bayes' rule, most people tend to "overreact" to unexpected and dramatic news events. This study of market efficiency investigates whether such behavior affects stock prices. The empirical evidence, based on CRSP monthly return data, is consistent with the overreaction hypothesis. Substantial weak form market inefficiencies are discovered. The results also shed new light on the January returns earned by prior "winners" and "losers." Portfolios of losers experience exceptionally large January returns as late as five years after portfolio formation.

In a previous paper, we found systematic price reversals for stocks that experience extreme long-term gains or losses: Past losers significantly outperform past winners. We interpreted this finding as consistent with the behavioral hypothesis of investor overreaction. In this follow-up paper, additional evidence is reported that supports the overreaction hypothesis and that is inconsistent with two alternative hypotheses based on firm size and differences in risk, as measured by CAPM-betas. The seasonal pattern of returns is also examined. Excess returns in January are related to both short-term and long-term past performance, as well as to the previous year market return.

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Results of experiments designed to test the claim of psychologists that expected utility theory does not provide a good descriptive model are reported. The deviation from tested theory is that, in revising beliefs, individuals ignore prior or base-rate-information contrary to Bayes rule. Flaws in the evidence in the psychological literature are noted, an experiment avoiding these difficulties is designed and carried out, and the psychologists' predictions are stated in terms of a more general model. The psychologists' predictions are confirmed for inexperienced or financially unmotivated subjects, but for others the evidence is less clear.

http://linkinghub.elsevier.com/retrieve/pii/0167268182900117

We formulate a test of the fungibility of money based on parallel shifts in the prices of different quality grades of a commodity. We embed the test in a discrete-choice model of product quality choice and estimate the model using panel microdata on gasoline purchases. We find that when gasoline prices rise, consumers substitute to lower octane gasoline, to an extent that cannot be explained by income effects. Across a wide range of specifications, we consistently reject the null hypothesis that households treat "gas money" as fungible with other income. We compare the empirical fit of three psychological models of decision making. A simple model of category budgeting fits the data well, with models of loss aversion and salience both capturing important features of the time series.

Economic analysis of law usually proceeds under the assumptions of neo-classical economics. But empirical evidence gives much reason to doubt these assumptions; people exhibit bounded rationality, bounded self-interest, and bounded willpower. This article offers a broad vision of how law and economics analysis may be improved by increased attention to insights about actual human behavior. It considers specific topics in the economic analysis of law and proposes new models and approaches for addressing these topics. The analysis of the article is organized into three categories: positive, prescriptive, and normative. Positive analysis of law concerns how agents behave in response to legal rules and how legal rules are shaped. Prescriptive analysis concerns what rules should be adopted to advance specified ends. Normative analysis attempts to assess more broadly the ends of the legal system: Should the system always respect people's choices? By drawing attention to cognitive and motivational problems of both citizens and government, behavioral law and economics offers answers distinct from those offered by the standard analysis.

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Community standards of fairness for the setting of prices and wages were elicited by telephone surveys. In customer or labor markets, it is acceptable for a firm to raise prices (or cut wages) when profits are threatened and to maintain prices when costs diminish. It is unfair to exploit shifts in demand by raising prices or cutting wages. Several market anomalies are explained by assuming that these standards of fairness influence the behavior of firms.

Contrary to theoretical expectations, measures of willingness to accept greatly exceed measures of willingness to pay. This paper reports several experiments that demonstrate that this "endowment effect" persists even in market settings with opportunities to learn. Consumption objects (e.g., coffee mugs) are randomly given to half the subjects in an experiment. Markets for the mugs are then conducted. The Coase theorem predicts that about half the mugs will trade, but observed volume is always significantly less. When markets for "induced-value" tokens are conducted, the predicted volume is observed, suggesting that transactions costs cannot explain the undertrading for consumption goods.

Aside from possible income effects, measures of the maximum amounts people will pay to avoid a loss and the minimum compensation necessary for them to accept it are generally assumed to be equivalent. Unexpectedly wide variations between these sums, however, have been noted in survey responses to hypothetical options. This paper reports the results of a series of experiments that confronted people with actual money payments and cash compensations. The results indicate that the compensation measure of value seems to exceed significantly the willingness to pay measure, which would appear to call into some question various rules of entitlement, damage assessments, and interpretations of indifference curves.

Recent equity carve‐outs in U.S. technology stocks appear to violate a basic premise of financial theory: identical assets have identical prices. In our 1998–2000 sample, holders of a share of company A are expected to receivexshares of company B, but the price of A is less thanxtimes the price of B. A prominent example involves 3Com and Palm. Arbitrage does not eliminate this blatant mispricing due to short‐sale constraints, so that B is overpriced but expensive or impossible to sell short. Evidence from options prices shows that shorting costs are extremely high, eliminating exploitable arbitrage opportunities.

This is perhaps the most sophisticated statement of the point of view that the chief social effect of the mass media is no change--to enforce the status quo and keep change from happening. This famous paper is full of ideas and concepts that have been discussed ever since it was published--the "status-conferral" power of the media their "narcotizing dysfunction" (the ability to inform their audiences and absorb their time with emerging them) their ability to "canalize" behavior (if a person is already convinced about the usefulness of a toothbrush it is not difficult to direct him to 1 toothbrush rather than another) and so on. It will repay thoughtful reading. But the central thesis is that the mass communication system integrated as it is into the business establishment has its chief social effect in enforcing existing norms and values. Mass propaganda can be effective it is said only when it has monopoly control when it is supplemented in an important way by personal communication or when it is satisfied with "canalizing" some already existing viewpoints of behaviors. Drs. Lazarsfeld and Merton are professors of sociology at Columbia University and Dr. Lazarsfeld was for many years the director of the Bureau of Applied Social Research. This paper was published in The Communication of Ideas edited by Lyman Bryson by the Institute for Religious and Social Studies in New York in 1948. It is reprinted by permission of the authors and the holder of the copyright. (authors modified)

This paper examines the proposition that fluctuations in discounts of closed-end funds are driven by changes in individual investor sentiment. The theory implies that discounts on various funds move together, that new funds get started when seasoned funds sell at a premium or a small discount, and that discounts are correlated with prices of other securities affected by the same investor sentiment. The evidence supports these predictions. In particular, we find that both closed-end funds and small stocks tend to be held by individual investors, and that the discounts on closed-end funds narrow when small stocks do well.

Several experimental studies have provided evidence that suggest indifference curves have a kink around the current endowment level. These results, which clearly contradict closely held economic doctrines, have led some influential commentators to call for an entirely new economic paradigm to displace conventional neoclassical theory e.g., prospect theory, which invokes psychological effects. This paper pits neoclassical theory against prospect theory by investigating data drawn from more than 375 subjects actively participating in a well-functioning marketplace. The pattern of results suggests that prospect theory adequately organizes behavior among inexperienced consumers, but consumers with intense market experience behave largely in accordance with neoclassical predictions. Moreover, the data are consistent with the notion that consumers learn to overcome the endowment effect in situations beyond specific problems they have previously encountered. This "transference of behavior" across domains has important implications in both a positive and normative sense.

Restrictions that a class of general equilibrium models place upon the average returns of equity and Treasury bills are found to be strongly violated by the U.S. data in the 1889–1978 period. This result is robust to model specification and measurement problems. We conclude that, most likely, an equilibrium model which is not an Arrow-Debreu economy will be the one that simultaneously rationalizes both historically observed large average equity return and the small average risk-free return.

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Monetary transactions in which consumption is temporally separated from purchase naturally lend themselves to multiple frames and to alternative accounting schemes, which nonetheless maintain a modicum of discipline and authenticity. We investigate some of the relevant accounting rules, and find that advanced purchases (e.g., a case of wine) are typically treated as “investments” rather than spending. At the same time, consumption of a good purchased earlier and used as planned (a wine bottle opened for dinner) is often coded as “free”, or even as savings. However, when it is not consumed as planned (a bottle is dropped and broken), then the relevant account, long dormant, is resuscitated and costs associated with the event are perceived as the cost of replacing the good, especially if replacement is actually likely. Related phenomena and assorted implications are discussed.

The concept of self-control is incorporated in a theory of individual intertemporal choice by modeling the individual as an organization. The individual at a point in time is assumed to be both a farsighted planner and a myopic doer. The resulting conflict is seen to be fundamentally similar to the agency conflict between the owners and managers of a firm. Both individuals and firms use the same techniques to mitigate the problems which the conflicts create. This paper stresses the implications of this agency model and discusses as applications the effect of pensions on saving, saving and the timing of income flows, and individual discount rates.

Self-control, mental accounting, and framing are incorporated in a behavioral enrichment of the life-cycle theory of saving called the Behavioral Life-Cycle (BLC) hypothesis. The key assumption of the BLC theory is that households treat components of their wealth as nonfungible, even in the absence of credit rationing. Specifically, wealth is assumed to be divided into three mental accounts: current income, current assets, and future income. The temptation to spend is assumed to be greatest for current income and least for future income. Considerable empirical support for the BLC theory is presented, primarily drawn from published econometric studies.

The economic theory of the consumer is a combination of positive and normative theories. Since it is based on a rational maximizing model it describes how consumers should choose, but it is alleged to also describe how they do choose. This paper argues that in certain well-defined situations many consumers act in a manner that is inconsistent with economic theory. In these situations economic theory will make systematic errors in predicting behavior. Kanneman and Tversey's prospect theory is proposed as the basis for an alternative descriptive theory. Topics discussed are: undeweighting of opportunity costs, failure to ignore sunk costs, scarch behavior choosing not to choose and regret, and precommitment and self-control.

A new model of consumer behavior is developed using a hybrid of cognitive psychology and microeconomics. The development of the model starts with the mental coding of combinations of gains and losses using the prospect theory value function. Then the evaluation of purchases is modeled using the new concept of "transaction utility". The household budgeting process is also incorporated to complete the characterization of mental accounting. Several implications to marketing, particularly in the area of pricing, are developed.

Myopic loss aversion is the combination of a greater sensitivity to losses than to gains and a tendency to evaluate outcomes frequently. Two implications of myopic loss aversion are tested experimentally. 1. Investors who display myopic loss aversion will be more willing to accept risks if they evaluate their investments less often. 2. If all payoffs are increased enough to eliminate losses, investors will accept more risk. In a task in which investors learn from experience, both predictions are supported. The investors who got the most frequent feedback (and thus the most information) took the least risk and earned the least money.

As firms switch from defined-benefit plans to defined-contribution plans, employees bear more responsibility for making decisions about how much to save. The em

Abstract This article described three heuristics that are employed in making judgements under uncertainty: (i) representativeness, which is usually employed when people are asked to judge the probability that an object or event A belongs to class or process B; (ii) availability of instances or scenarios, which is often employed when people are asked to assess the frequency of a class or the plausibility of a particular development; and (iii) adjustment from an anchor, which is usually employed in numerical prediction when a relevant value is available. These heuristics are highly economical and usually effective, but they lead to systematic and predictable errors. A better understanding of these heuristics and of the biases to which they lead could improve judgements and decisions in situations of uncertainty.

No abstract is available for this item.