Feasibility of implementing a behavioral economics mobile health platform for individuals with behavioral health conditions

Coordinated Behavioral Care’s (CBC) Pathway Home™ (PH) program partnered with Wellth, Inc., a mobile health platform grounded in behavioral economics theory, to help individuals with behavioral health conditions build and reinforce health habits by providing daily reminders to take medication, requiring tasks (photos demonstrating remembrance), and providing financial incentives tied to behaviors. CBC made Wellth, Inc. available to individuals enrolling in its PH program for the purpose of demonstrating the feasibility of implementing a novel mobile technology grounded in behavioral economic theory to increase habits of health activities, such as taking medication, among adults with behavioral health conditions.

Policy Analysis of Individual Financial Planning Affected by Personal Bias Factors in Indonesia

Even in making individual financial decisions, humans will naturally still be affected by personal biases which leads to less than optimal, illogical, and irrational decisions. It will be an important issue due to individual financial decisions which accumulate as a whole country's economic performance. This research introduces the idea to combine personal biases stated in behavioral economic theory with individual financial decision models using a system dynamics approach. The research uses vignette a fractional factorial studies method to calculate the score of personal bias factors. The main findings of the research show that there is a positive feedback loop on individual financial planning which is influenced by personal biases. The research concludes that personal bias factors such as the hedonic editing effect, future spending, category budgeting, endowment effect, and house-money effects are important factors in individual financial planning. Thus, paying attention to these personal biases then may help policy maker to control saving, spending, and investment rates in Indonesia.

Policy Analysis of Individual Financial Planning Affected by Personal Bias Factors in Indonesia

Even in making individual financial decisions, humans will naturally still be affected by personal biases which leads to less than optimal, illogical, and irrational decisions. It will be an important issue due to individual financial decisions which accumulate as a whole country's economic performance. This research introduces the idea to combine personal biases stated in behavioral economic theory with individual financial decision models using a system dynamics approach. The research uses vignette a fractional factorial studies method to calculate the score of personal bias factors. The main findings of the research show that there is a positive feedback loop on individual financial planning which is influenced by personal biases. The research concludes that personal bias factors such as the hedonic editing effect, future spending, category budgeting, endowment effect, and house-money effects are important factors in individual financial planning. Thus, paying attention to these personal biases then may help policy maker to control saving, spending, and investment rates in Indonesia.

Behavioral Economic Theory: a Methodological Breakthrough or Extension of the Boundaries of Dominant Orthodoxy?

The article is devoted to the analysis of the place of behavioral approach in the structure of modern economic study. The evolution of views on the essence of economic behavior of individuals is desc ribed and the peculiarities of approaches to its definition of different economic schools are analyzed. The comparative analysis of behavioral and neoclassical approaches is presented; the peculiarity of the used method is the presentation of the neoclassical direction not in the aggregate, but as two main branches – cardinal and ordinal, which allowed for a more detailed analysis. The analysis revealed differences and some similarity of these directions of research. According to the findings, it is concluded that the behavioral approach is not the complete opposite of the neoclassical, but has a significant number of features close to the ideas of ordinary people, so it can be considered as a natural continuation of established ideas deepened through the use of an interdisciplinary approach. The article also outlines possible options for the development of neoclassical and behavioral approaches and the current issues for further research.

An Analysis of Decision Under Risk in Rats

Prospect Theory is the predominant behavioral economic theory describing decision-making under risk. It accounts for near universal aspects of human choice behavior whose prevalence may reflect fundamental neural mechanisms. We now apply Prospect Theory’s framework to rodents, using a task in which rats chose between guaranteed and probabilistic rewards. Like humans, rats distorted probabilities and showed diminishing marginal sensitivity, in which they were less sensitive to differences in larger rewards. They exhibited reference dependence, in which the valence of outcomes (gain or loss) was determined by an internal reference point reflecting reward history. The similarities between rats and humans suggest conserved neural substrates, and enable application of powerful molecular/circuit tools to study mechanisms of psychological phenomena from behavioral economics.