Economic behavior is explored from a psychological perspective by both, prominent economic psychologists with a long tradition in studying economic problems as well as economists who are open and interested in the psychological aspects of economic behavior. The contributions discuss the prospects and difficulties of this dialogue between psychology and economics and survey some important areas of research where such an interdisciplinary approach has proved to be successful. The text can also be used to introduce psychology to economists in order to give them an idea how to analyze economic problems from a psychological perspective. It also indicates many urgent and exciting research topics awaiting eager scholars to carry on the dialogue.

Economic behavior is explored from a psychological perspective by both, prominent economic psychologists with a long tradition in studying economic problems as well as economists who are open and interested in the psychological aspects of economic behavior. The contributions discuss the prospects and difficulties of this dialogue between psychology and economics and survey some important areas of research where such an interdisciplinary approach has proved to be successful. The text can also be used to introduce psychology to economists in order to give them an idea how to analyze economic problems from a psychological perspective. It also indicates many urgent and exciting research topics awaiting eager scholars to carry on the dialogue.

A number of books on economic psychology have appeared in the past few years. The most recent publications are by MacFadyen and Mac Fadyen (1986), Furnham and Lewis (1986), Lea et al. (1987) and Van Raaij et al. (1988). Why produce yet another book for this discipline? This question can be answered in various ways. In a sense, this book is the answer in itself. Its presentation of re search and theories is innovative in this field, at least to my knowledge. It attempts to structure the many theories emerging in the interdisci plinary science of economic psychology and to explain the background of the research. The second answer is pragmatic. In our introductory course of eco nomic psychology for economics students at Erasmus University Rot terdam we used several of the above mentioned books. Our experience with this material is that, when preparing our lectures, we had to ex plain many additional theories and experiments to our students. fur thermore, diagrams, figures and examples had to be culled from other sources or made by ourselves. It is not my intention to run down these publications since I think they provide an excellent treatment of a num ber of topics by specialists in economic psychology. The plan for the present book, however, emerged from our need to present an integrated introductory course for our students.

Written by two leading psychologists, this timely publication is the only up-to-date, English-language textbook on economic psychology. Focused on application, it is an essential resource for advanced undergraduate and postgraduate courses on economic psychology, behavioural economics and social psychology, in both business and psychology departments.

This book is targeted at students of economics and business administration and presents the state of the art in behavioral economics and economic psychology and their applications to economics and business. It discusses economic psychological themes, information processing, and applications in fields including entrepreneurial behavior, perceptions of price, risk, inflation and economic activities, and economic socialization.