Friends of the Behavioral Economics Club, this week we present the paper “Search for solutions, learning, simulation, and choice processes in suicidal behavior” by Dombrovski, A. and Hallquist, M. H. (2021), in which authors make a revision about the decision making process and the solutions to the suicidal behavior considering the point of view of behavioral economics. Suicide is one of the most important and significant causes of death in recent years, especially among young population. Every day thousands of people decide to carry out suicidal behaviors and, sadly, end their lives, which is ..read more

Friends of the Behavioral Economics Club, this week we present the paper “Behavioral economics and coping-related drinking motives in trauma exposed drinkers: Implications for the self-medication hypothesis” by Luciano, M. T.; Acuff, S. F.; McDevitt-Murphy, M. E. and Murphy, J. G. (2021), in which authors apply the point of view of behavioral economics to investigate why people that have suffered traumatic experiences have a higher tendency to use alcohol to cope with them. In the paper we presented last week we saw how important it is to look for explanations and solutions to help when it com ..read more

Friends of the Behavioral Economics Club, this week we present the paper “Future Imperfect: Behavioral Economics and Government Paternalism” by Le Grand, J. (2018), in which the author reflects about the paternalists decisions of the government and their relationship with behavioral economics.  Numerous economists, psychologists, and other experts have used the growing number of empirical research in behavioral economics to understand paternalistic government policies. The main argument is that people make mistakes in judgment when it comes to their goals; consequently, governments interv ..read more

Friends of the Behavioral Economics Blog, this week we present the paper “Depression and financial planning horizon”, by Choung, Y.; Chatterjee, S. and Pak, T. Y. (2022), in which authors carry out a study with people from different generations to understand how suffering from depression affects the decisions we make in the financial context.  Recent observations and studies have pointed, in recent years, to altered reward processing in people living with depression, considering that hopelessness is part of the clinical picture of the disease. Depressed mood is often also associated with ..read more

Friends of the Behavioral Economics Blog, this week we present the paper “How to Effectively Promote Eco-Friendly Behaviors: Insights from Contextual Behavioral Science”, by Stapleton, A.; McHugh, L. and Karekla, M. (2022), in which authors think about how to promote behaviors that favor the ecological awareness of people and organizations. Climate change is one of the major concerns of the 21st century for several reasons: it is occurring in the present, its severity is increasing rapidly, and human activity is contributing to this increase.  Experts comment that, despite scientific cons ..read more

Friends of the Behavioral Economics Blog, this week we present the paper “Regional culture: the role of the invisible hand in shaping local family firms’ top management team”, by Yu, X.; Zhang, Y.; Cheng, X.; Li, H.; Chen, Y. and Zhou, W. (2022), in which authors carry out a study to know how clan culture and regional culture affects family businesses. There are plenty of studies on family and non-family businesses, and the vast majority have focused on the differences between both when it comes to choosing candidates to fill top management positions.  Compared to non-family businesses, f ..read more

Friends of the Behavioral Economics Blog, this week we present the paper “Gender differences in competitiveness: friends matter”, by Jorgensen, L. K.; Piovesan, M. and Willadsen, H. (2022), in which authors analyze whether men and women are equally influenced when they are surrounded by successful people and how this affects their competitiveness.  Gender differences in the world of work are related, among other things, with the attitudes that men and women have towards elements such as, for example, competition.  According to a 2007 paper by Niederle and Vesterlund, men are twice as ..read more

Friends of the Behavioral Economics Blog, this week we present the paper “The role of physical activity promoting thinking skills and emotional behavior of preschool children”, by Wang, Changwei (2022), in whichthe authors main purpose is to determine the relationship between physical education and emotional development of preschool children. This study involved 366 children (188 boys and 178 girls) at the age of 5 and 6 years old. There has been shown that regular physical activity provides psychological benefits, like reducing symptoms of depression, positive moods, reduced anxiety, and incr ..read more

Friends of the Behavioral Economics Blog, this week we present the paper “The longitudinal interplay between attention bias and interpretation bias in social anxiety in adolescents”, by Henricks, L. A.; Lange, W. G.; Luijten, M.; van den Berg, Y. H. M.; Stoltz, S. E. M. J.; Cillessen, A. H. N. and Becker, E. S. (2022), in which authors carry out a study to know whether the attention bias and the interpretation bias are related to social anxiety in teenagers, and if so, how.  Social anxiety is closely related to the fear of being negatively evaluated by others and is often accompanied by a ..read more

Friends of the Behavioral Economics Blog, this week we present the paper “Revealing differences in brand loyalty and brand engagement of single or no parented young adults”, by Morkunas, M. (2022), in which the author carries out an investigation to know whether adverse circumstances such as parental divorce or a context of orphanhood would affect the consumer behavior of adolescents and young adults. Central and Eastern European countries are characterized by a high number of divorces. This is a circumstance that places children in an insecure social position, which is amplified by numerous f ..read more