1. Behavior Economics

2. What is Behavior Economics?
Definition
Focus On:
Evolutionary Bases of Behavior
Need for Accuracy

3. The Big Questions Why do we want all of this money and stuff?
Why do people want more money when they already have some?
Why does what we want have to be the newest, the fastest, the coolest, the most expensive?
What do men want vs. what women want?
How do companies exploit this knowledge?
How can you avoid being exploited?
Why do some people have money and stuff, and other people don’t?
What happens to all of this stuff when we don’t want it anymore and how will that affect us in the future?

4. Human Behavior and Money
“Markets can be mean to investors who buy when excited and sell when afraid.”
EEA vs. modern financial practices/institutions
“Lizard Brains”
seek out patterns
look to the past
repeat successful behaviors.
Other Human Traits

5. Why We are Bad at Saving
Business Math Long Term Thinking EEA Saving and Investing Defeat is Not and Option

6. Positive Thinking
Pros
Cons
Modern Traps

7. The “Sensible Model” of Consumerist Capitalism
Human instincts for trying unconsciously to display certain desirable personal traits (the driving force)
+ current social norms for displaying those traits through certain kinds of credentials, jobs, goods and services
+ current technological abilities and constraints
+ certain social institutions and ideologies
+ historical accident and cultural inertia
= early 21st century consumerist capitalism

8. Human Instincts
Q: We don’t really need all of this money, prestige and stuff to survive, so why do we spend 4 or more years in college, 40 plus hours a week, for 40 or more years of our lives in order to have a college degree in order to have a better job in order to make more money?
A: Short answer: Sexual Selection.
Q: Then why do women do it?

9. Human Behavior Male Conspicuous Consumption
Female Conspicuous Consumption
Juvenile Conspicuous Consumption
culture-specific indicators of fitness
higher status

10. Human Fitness EEA Fitness Indicators Modern Fitness Indicators
Physical
Personality
Cognitive
“Liquid Fitness”
Consumer Decision-making

11. Stuff Categories of Stuff Trait Displays Pleasure Button-Pushers
Survival Basics

12. Marketing
Miller’s Theory
Advertising and Branding

13. Power to the People Haves and Have-Nots Basic Drives
Corporate Exploitation of Drives

14. College Stats Reasons Average American Debt
Average Yearly Incomes of Varying Degrees of Education
Professional
Doctoral
Master’s
Bachelor’s
Some College
High School
Average American Debt

15. Sources Mean Markets and Lizard Brains, by
Terry Burnham-Author of Mean Genes
Spent, by Geoffrey Miller