Name: 行動経済学.クラッシュコースEcon 27 (Behavioral Economics: Crash Course Econ 27)
Uploaded: 2021-01-14T06:29:23.000Z
Duration: 10 min 34 s
Description: VoiceTubeの動画で発音を聞きながら英語表現を覚えよう！学べる英語：

Adriene: Hi, this is Crash Course Economics, I’m Adriene Hill.

様態の副詞

Jacob: And I’m Jacob Clifford. So, when economists make their models, they generally

assume that people are rational and predictable.

Adriene: But when we look at actual human beings, it turns out that people are impulsive,

shortsighted, and, a lot of times, just plain irrational. Look! Balloons!

Jacob: Today we’re talking about Behavioral Economics and how people actually make decisions.

Behavioral economics is a subfield of economics that focuses on the psychological, social,

and emotional factors that influence decision-making. That's not necessarily new. In fact, our old

buddy Adam Smith, discussed it in The Theory of Moral Sentiments in 1759.

But generations of economists chose to ignore many irrational elements of decision making

since it makes it harder to predict human behavior.

But in the last few decades, behavioral economics has made a comeback. Several Nobel Prizes

have been awarded to researchers that blend economics and psychology and behavioral economics

is being applied to more and more fields like marketing, finance, political science, and public policy.

Now it’s important to mention that irrational human behavior doesn’t negate everything

you’ve learned here at Crash Course Economics. It just adds another layer of complexity,

which is exactly what we love at Crash Course

Now in most cases, people are rational. When the price falls for a product, people have a tendancy

to buy more of that product, so the law of demand holds true. But economists also accept

that there is bounded rationality. Limits on information, time, and abilities might

prevent people from seeking out the best possible outcome.

For example, if the price for ice cream is really low consumers might not buy more.

In fact, they might buy less if they think that that low price means that ice cream tastes horrible.

Now if that happens, then the law of demand doesn’t hold true, which creates a serious problem in classical economics.

I mean it is the LAW of demand. You can’t have a situation that breaks the law and still

call it a law. That doesn’t happen in other disciplines like physics…except it does.

The Newtonian laws of physics, like gravity, hold true most of the time but they break

down at the quantum level. They explain the orbits of planets, but they have a harder

And It’s the same in economics. Classical economic theories explain the big picture

stuff pretty well, but there are still a lot of things about individual decision-making

Adriene: In our ice cream example one of the problems is lack of information. Classical

economics assumes that consumers have perfect information when making choices. That is,

they know or at least can quickly access information about prices and quality, but, in reality, they often don’t.

Sure, the consumer could ask around or call their friends to see if they’ve tried that

type of ice cream but they're probably not gonna do that. In this situation, consumers

may act on the limited information they have, a suspiciously low price, which means either

the ice cream is a great deal or it tastes like mayonnaise. They just don’t know.

Prices do send a lot of signals, and there’s even science on how prices change perception.

A study in California analyzed the brains of people taste testing a variety of red wines.

The researchers gave participants fake prices and scanned their brains to determine the level of enjoyment.

The results were surprising. When they thought the price was higher, they actually liked the wine more.

This held true even when the subjects were given the exact same type of wine but were

told it was a different higher-priced wine. The researchers said "Contrary to the basic

assumptions of economics…marketing actions can successfully affect experienced pleasantness

by manipulating non-intrinsic attributes of goods.”

So, once you’ve got a palatable Pinot Noir, you might be able to raise the price, and

actually raise the demand. All you have to do is change perceptions.

The idea that perceptions and passions influence our actions also applies in finance.

Many economists used to believe that assets, like stocks and real estate, would stay at or near

their real value because cold, calculating investors would buy undervalued assets and

sell overvalued assets. But that doesn’t explain bubbles:

In real life, investors aren’t always cold and calculating. They can get worked up and irrational sometimes.

This helps explain bubbles. From the Dutch Tulip Mania of the 17th century, to the 2008 financial crisis.

Investors became irrationally exuberant, and were driven not by logic, but by what

economist John Maynard Keynes once called, “Animal Spirits.”

So behavioral economics doesn’t blow up traditional economic theory, it just seeks to understand

when and why people behave differently than economic models suggest. Let’s go the Thought Bubble:

Jacob: One of the most popular experiments in behavioral economics is called the ultimatum game.

In this experiment, two players decide how to share a specific sum of money, let’s say $100.

The first player is given all the money and then is asked to propose a way of splitting it with the second player.

Now if the second player accepts the deal both players get to keep the money.

But, if the second player refuses, nobody gets to keep the money.

When the first player offers to split the money 50/50 the second player almost always accepts.

But what happens when the first player offers an unequal split, like 80/20?

Would you accept that offer? Well, It turns out that less equal offers are often rejected.

Now that doesn’t seem surprising, but it directly contradicts classical economic theory. It’s irrational.

The rational choice would be for the second player to accept any offer, even if it's only a dollar.

After all, a dollar is better than nothing. But human behavior is not motivated solely by gain;

it’s also shaped by complex ideas like fairness, injustice, and even revenge.

The ultimatum game shows that people aren’t always as predictable as many economists like to suggest.

If people were entirely rational then they would consistently make the same decision

given identical options, but sometimes people's preferences are dependent on how the options

are presented. Psychologists call this type of cognitive bias the Framing Effect.

I mean, would you rather eat beef that's 75% fat free or 25% fat? Would you rather enter

a raffle that claims that 1 out of every 1000 players is a winner or a raffle that points

out that there will be 999 losers. Would you support a law named the “Improve our Schools Act”

or one named the “Raise our Taxes Act”?

Each of these scenarios can be framed in ways that influence your decision. Classical economics

argues that framing should have relatively little effect on decision making because most

people are rational and intelligent, but in the real world, people can be pretty irrational.

Adriene: Thanks Thought Bubble. So, Businesses have known about the psychology of decision

making for a long time. For example, a gym might break down its membership fee and advertise

it only costs only $1 a day, which seems way more affordable than $365 a year.

And a TV priced at $499.99 seems like a better deal than one priced at $500.

This is called psychological pricing. It can make people feel like they’re getting a good deal.

Interestingly, high-end retailers sometimes do the opposite. They set their prices at whole

dollars, basically signalling their goods are of a higher quality than you might see at a discount store.

Behavioral economists also like to talk about nudge theory. Nudges encourage people to act

a certain way, without actually changing the choices that are available to them.

Fighting childhood obesity is a priority in many countries and policy makers have suggested

a whole range of solutions. Everything from banning soda in schools to running media campaigns

promoting healthy eating. Behavioral economists approached the problem a little differently.

They wanted to see if they could get children to eat healthier by rearranging school cafeterias.

They put healthier food like fruits and vegetables on eye-level shelves and less healthy foods,

like desserts, in less convenient places. Classical economic theory suggests that this

idea wouldn’t work since rational people would pick the brownie.

But it turns out, students choose the healthier foods. Nudge theory works and it’s changing how we