Topics in Public and Behavioral Economics

Reading list

The course consists of some lectures and seminars common to all students and several elective seminars. The readings are predominantly scientific articles of which some are compulsory, some recommended and some the students should look for themselves. The complete reading list may be found in the course guide on Canvas. Below are the compulsory readings for lectures and student seminars:

Lecture 1

Boadway & Bruce (1984) Welfare economics, Blackwell Publishers, Oxford, ch 5.

Lecture 2

DellaVigna, S., 2009. Psychology and Economics: Evidence from the Field, Journal of Economic Literature, 47, 315-372. (Do not get bogged down in details– get an overall picture of the different concepts and main empirical findings. This paper also serves as complementary reading to the papers suggested for the seminars.).

Lecture 3

Nagel, R. "Unraveling in guessing games: An experimental study." The American Economic Review (1995): 1313-1326.

Kahneman, D., and A. Tversky. 1979. “Prospect Theory: An Analysis of Decision under Risk.” Econometrica, 47(2), pp. 263-291

Lecture 4

Piketty & Saez (2013) “Optimal labor income taxation” in Handbook of Public Economics, Section 4.

Student seminar 1

Boadway & Bruce (1984) Welfare economics, Blackwell Publishers, Oxford, ch 5.

Backhouse, R. E., Baujard, A., & Nishizawa, T. (2020). Revisiting the history of welfare economics.

Student seminar 2

Carlsson F., C. Gravert, O. Johansson-Stenman and V. Kurz (2021) The use of green nudges as an environmental policy instrument, Review of Environmental Economics and Policy, 15(2), 216-237.

Allcott, H., and J. Kessler (2019) The welfare effects of nudges: A case study of energy use social comparison, American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, 11 (1), 236-276.