Syllabus for the Course in Behavioral Decisions in Politics

(Prof. Massimo Egidi/Dott. Andrea Pozzali) 

The course aims at providing students with some of the basic concepts and instruments of behavioural economics and decision making. Specific attention will be focused on experimental evidences concerning the violation of expected utility theory and on prospect theory as an alternative tool for the description of individual decision making. In the second part of the course, some specific applications of prospect theory to political sciences will be discussed.

Tuesday 25 Jan                     16.00-18.00

Introduction: the basic concepts of rational choice models 

preliminary concepts 

Thursday 26 Jan                    16.00-18.00

Rational Choice and the Framing of Decisions (Tversky and Kahneman, 1986)

Tuesday1 Jan             16.00-18.00

Daniel Kahneman – Maps of Bounded Rationality:Psychology for Behavioral Economics

Thursday 2 Jan                      16.00-18.00

Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky: Prospect theory(1979)

Tuesday 8 Feb                       16.00-18.00

Prospect theory and Political Sciences: A general framework (Levy, 2003)

Thursday 9 Feb                     16.00-18.00

Prospect theory and Political Sciences: Applications to Political Choices ( Quattrone and Tversky, 1988)

Tuesday 15 Feb                     16.00-18.00

Prospect theory and Political Sciences: Applications to International Relationships (McDermott, 1992)

Thursday 16 Feb                   16.00-18.00

Prospects for future applications of prospect theory to International Relationships: group polarization, framing in political sciences (Boettcher, 2004)