Essays on Economic Psychology. With 20 Figures

The chapters in this book have been written, reviewed and revised by psychologists and economists united by their interest in the dialogue between the two disciplines. The idea of contributing to this volume came up when the authors cooperated during a period of three weeks in the teaching staff of a summer school of the International Association for Research in Economic Psychology (IAREP). Each of the three workshops of the summer school running over 20 days and focusing on economic policy, consumer behavior, and entrepreneurial behavior was conducted by a professor of economics and a professor of psychology. Thus, there was a clear necessity and ample opportunity for an interdisciplinary dialogue. Of course, the chapters do not cover the whole field of economic psychology, but represent selected topics of the authors' research activities which are of a more general interest to psychologists, economists, or other social scientists who want to or have to deal with economic behavior in research, teaching, or consulting. An encouraging sign of the rapprochement of psychology and economics is provided by the fact that there are a number of chapters in the book in which the reader can not easily tell whether the author is (or was originally) an economist or a psychologist. We hope that crossing the borders between psychology and economics in both directions is encouraged by the book and that it contributes to a more comprehensive understanding of people's reactions to events and structural changes in the economic environment and of people's production of the economic environment and its changes. Finally, we want to thank Christian Miiller and Sandra Kopfberger for their assistance in our editorial work. They proved to be very careful and skilled in putting the manuscripts into a unified format, compiling the subject and author indices and checking the lists of references.