Economists have entered into the realm of sports to provide what they believe to be more cogent explanations for sport-related behaviour and to suggest ways in which incentives can improve sports outcomes. But prices and income, the traditional workhorses of conventional economics, can only provide partial explanations and understandings. Drawing on a bounded rationality approach to behavioural economics, this book demonstrates the analytical insights to be gained by supplementing the conventional economics toolbox with psychological, cognitive, sociological, and institutional factors. The international cast list of contributors cover a wide range of sports topics on which a behavioural approach can reveal new insights. These include preferences, managerial, efficiency, choking, doping, favouritism, athlete well- being, and spectator behaviour. Throughout the book, there is an emphasis on the cognitive limits to smart decision-making as well as the critical role played by the decision-making environment. This volume demonstrates that adopting a bounded rationality approach, complimented with other behaviouralist approaches, helps to better explain sport-related behavioural, sub-optimal behavioural, and market failures. It also provides insights that could be used to improve sports outcomes and the well-being of those involved in sports and to better configure policy to enhance sports performance. This groundbreaking book will be an indispensable reference to students and scholars of sports economics, sports management, and sports science.

Economists have entered into the realm of sports to provide what they believe to be more cogent explanations for sport-related behaviour and to suggest ways in which incentives can improve sports outcomes. But prices and income, the traditional workhorses of conventional economics, can only provide partial explanations and understandings. Drawing on a bounded rationality approach to behavioural economics, this book demonstrates the analytical insights to be gained by supplementing the conventional economics toolbox with psychological, cognitive, sociological, and institutional factors. The international cast list of contributors cover a wide range of sports topics on which a behavioural approach can reveal new insights. These include preferences, managerial, efficiency, choking, doping, favouritism, athlete well- being, and spectator behaviour. Throughout the book, there is an emphasis on the cognitive limits to smart decision-making as well as the critical role played by the decision-making environment. This volume demonstrates that adopting a bounded rationality approach, complimented with other behaviouralist approaches, helps to better explain sport-related behavioural, sub-optimal behavioural, and market failures. It also provides insights that could be used to improve sports outcomes and the well-being of those involved in sports and to better configure policy to enhance sports performance. This groundbreaking book will be an indispensable reference to students and scholars of sports economics, sports management, and sports science.

Behavioral economics has potential to offer novel solutions to some of today's most pressing public health problems: How do we persuade people to eat healthy and lose weight? How can health professionals communicate health risks in a way that is heeded? How can food labeling be modified to inform healthy food choices? Behavioral Economics and Public Health is the first book to apply the groundbreaking insights of behavioral economics to the persisting problems of health behaviors and behavior change. In addition to providing a primer on the behavioral economics principles that are most relevant to public health, this book offers details on how these principles can be employed to mitigating the world's greatest health threats, including obesity, smoking, risky sexual behavior, and excessive drinking. With contributions from an international team of scholars from psychology, economics, marketing, public health, and medicine, this book is a trailblazing new approach to the most difficult and important problems of our time.

This book presents accounts of economic and psychological analyses of association football (or “soccer” as it is popularly known in the USA). As football is widely accepted to be the world’s most popular sport, the case for scientific investigation of its characteristics is self-evident. As the contributions to this book demonstrate, the game of football offers an ideal opportunity to empirically investigate a wide range of broad issues, for example: behavioural decision-making; judgmental forecasting; motivation; game-theoretic models of strategic choice; competition and labour markets. Are teams more likely to concede a goal after having just scored? Does the team going first in a penalty shoot-out have an advantage? Should goal-keepers dive or stay put for penalty kicks? Do referees make decisions consistently? Why do fans like their teams? What factors influence the career of footballers? How well can experts predict football matches? How accurate are prediction markets? How does the stock-market react to match outcomes? These questions and others are addressed in this book. A particular focus is the investigation of popular conceptions—and misconceptions—about football. Of interest to psychologists, behavioural economists and football enthusiasts with an analytic approach to understanding the game, this book brings together contributions from a range of academic disciplines and will stimulate further research into football and the intriguing insights into behaviour it offers. See feature article in The Independent, October 8th, 2008: http://www.independent.co.uk/sport/football/news-and-comment/fact-or-fiction-form-in-football-954440.html Listen to interview with Patric Andersson on Swedish National Radio http://www.sr.se/cgi-bin/P1/program/index.asp?ProgramID=1302 Read Chris Charles’s blog on BBC website: http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/chrischarles/2008/10/lies_damned_lies_and_statictic.html

This book examines the behavior of individuals at risk and insurance industry policy makers involved in selling, buying and regulation.

The first book to use the world's most popular sport to test economic theories and document novel human behavior A wealth of research in recent decades has seen the economic approach to human behavior extended over many areas previously considered to belong to sociology, political science, law, and other fields. Research has also shown that economics can provide insight into many aspects of sports, including soccer. Beautiful Game Theory is the first book that uses soccer to test economic theories and document novel human behavior. In this brilliant and entertaining book, Ignacio Palacios-Huerta illuminates economics through the world's most popular sport. He offers unique and often startling insights into game theory and microeconomics, covering topics such as mixed strategies, discrimination, incentives, and human preferences. He also looks at finance, experimental economics, behavioral economics, and neuroeconomics. Soccer provides rich data sets and environments that shed light on universal economic principles in interesting and useful ways. Essential reading for students, researchers, and sports enthusiasts, Beautiful Game Theory is the first book to show what soccer can do for economics.

- Incorporates the latest experimental evidence from across economics, psychology and neuroscience to provide cutting-edge introduction for students. - Structured around three key settings – individuals, small groups and larger impersonal groups (e.g. markets) – this text provides a logical framework for the study of economic decision-making. - Includes discussion of emotions including fairness, trust, selfishness and altruism on both a micro and macro level to show how they can influence personal decision making as well as entire economies.